NEWS: The Mercury: 2008's Most Anticipated List

The nominees of the annual Mercury Music Prize were unveiled at a London shindig earlier this morning.

In the running for the coveted award are Quietus favourites British Sea Power, Elbow, Neon Neon and Radiohead.

Last year’s winners were new rave accidental pioneers The Klaxons (pictured above) with their debut album Myths Of The Near Future.

The winner will be announced during all the pomp and ceremony of a true industry back-slapping bash on September 9th.

The complete shortlist for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize is as follows:

• Adele - _19_
• British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
• Burial - Untrue
• Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
• Estelle - Shine
• Laura Marling - Alas, I Cannot Swim
• Neon Neon – Stainless Style
• Portico Quartet - Knee Deep In The North Sea
• Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns
• Radiohead - In Rainbows
• Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
• The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

Last year's victorious contenders can be seen below:

This news story can be found on the Quietus with other pieces by Dean Samways.

Words: Dean Samways

Image: the Quietus

NEWS: Dirty Libertine Chav: Busy Bee Barat

Pushing aside the ever renewing hype about possibly joining forces once again with loveable rogue Doherty, Carl Barat has revealed details of another side project he’s got brewing away.

On top of the work he’s been doing on The Chavs, with Tim Burgess of The Charlatans and Klaxons’ Jamie Reynolds, Barat has begun working on a dub album with Reverend and The Makers frontman Jon McClure.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music earlier today, he gave away few details:

“I'm just making a little dub record. To see how it goes, and if it's no good then well just leave it. It's just something I want to do and something he wants to do, so…”

The former-Libertine who is currently touring the new Dirty Pretty Things album Romance at Short Notice also spoke a little about what The Chavs are getting upto next.

Treating The Chavs as a somewhat of a musical retreat he said the new material is going to be quite different from they’ve done before:

“It's gonna be our darker stuff that we haven't been able to do with our bands. I think, I mean the inspiration starting points were the later PiL records. The idea is everyone brings something to the table really and we just see how it goes. It might change completely, but The Chavs are not going to be too silly anymore.”

Back to the Doherty rumour mill then?

For a retrospective look at how The Chavs were born, glance your eyes below:

This news story can be found on Drowned in Sound with other pieces by Dean Samways.

Words: Dean Samways

Image: Uncut

LIVE REVIEW: Simian Mobile Disco, Southampton Guildhall (Date: 30.12.07)

I’m always a little bit sceptical when I’m about to see a dance act, even one prefixed, oddly, with the ‘indie’ adjective. There’s something Not Quite Right about seeing two guys playing music through a series of contraptions analogue and digital, LED-littered units and a mess of wires. They could just be playing their CDs under the desk, couldn’t they? They might have their iTunes library open, right?

Such pessimism often breeds a reluctance to go to this sort of gig. Some time ago a Chemical Brothers, Faithless or Fat Boy Slim show wouldn’t even have lightly pricked my interest. After tonight, though, I’m converted.

I’m a complete Simian Mobile Disco virgin. It took Justice to bring them to my attention, and they don’t even play that track tonight. Instead they blow me – and all and sundry – away with everything else. And they’re only the support band, playing second fiddle to Mercury winners Klaxons.

The visual show surrounding SMD’s bobbing twin bodies is almost as tight as the electronic beats: vertical bars of light flash between red, green and blue and guide white circles up and down around the two guys as they tweak their arrangement of equipment at the centre of the stage – it’s all very Radiohead at Glasto 2003, aesthetically. During each of the songs the two James’ are only visible by their silhouettes dashing between the beams, the ceiling cast in white light.

As expected the set is one long mix of tracks woven together with a joyous jauntiness that sends hands thrusting into the dry ice mist. But such descriptions inevitably fail to portray the display in all its real, malleable glory.

The duo continue to work their knobs, switches and buttons, bending bodies around in the darkness to the rhythm being generated. The use of the equipment as a percussion instrument is impressive, and with every thud of an open fist the songs alter and transform into the next track. Sound and vision is often said to be the sensory combination that inspires and awes, and this astonishes. This feels more of an event than a traditional gig, with subsequent DJs sending the crowd into a euphoric state of indie trance. Headliners Klaxons can only stand back and wish that their show was as electric as their support’s. An unfortunate position to be in, especially when you’ve supposedly penned NME’s Song of the Year.

Words: Dean Samways

Photos: neumagazine.co.uk

NEWS: Mercury Music Prize 2007 - The Result

The Klaxons walk it with the crowd basking in the Winehouse show

The winner has been announced and the runners-up given a sympathetic tap on the back. The Klaxons walked away with the accolade, claiming that they won it because they embodied genuinely new music whereas other contenders simply regurgitated older genres. This was no doubt pointed towards Amy Winehouse. They said: "The Mercury is about pushing music forward and we think that's what we did with this album."

Despite Amy's defeat she stole the show and silenced the crowd with an amazing live acoustic performance after much bewilderment over whether or not she would turn up. It was also her name that was splashed more liberally across the column inches than the winners title, thanks to her drug problems and the media's apparent obsession with such anti-social behaviour.

BBC news suggested that the judges edges away from the idea of handing Winehouse the gong in an effort to show her that she has the capability of winning but that they were not prepared to celebrate a musician with such problems. This raises many questions like, shouldn't the award just be presented on artistic merit and ignore such sub-matters?

Whatsoever maybe the politics surrounding the event, The Klaxons are deserved winners for their stormy cross genre sound and Winehouse shouldn't feel hard done by. All the alternate praise for her performance and appearance should be enough to please her and the label, all things considered.

Words: Dean Samways

Photo: thisislondon.co.uk

NEWS: Mercury Music Prize 2007

9 out of this year's 12 nominees are new musical express lovies

2007's Mercury Music Prize shortlist was published this week. In past mercury award ceremonies the selection resembles a puddle of vomit, the result of excessive musical taste mixing, spat from the HMV database. This year, however, the chosen few look like they've been enthusiastically plucked from the pages of the popular music press by a swaggering floppy haired Topman shopper.

This, of course isn't such a bad thing for all those who thought the Mercury Music Prize was nothing more than an excuse for head honchos at sony bmg to lavishly stroke the fat cat's at time warner. an event where praise is thrown hithe and tithe between label bosses before the head back to their offices the next day to plot each others demise. at least this year a large section of the audience will actually know who the acts are. however, this is not so good for smaller acts who, once nominated, received a spike in album sales thanks to massive publicity and those tiny branded stickers splashed all over their album covers.

although smaller acts may have been tossed to the wayside this year, a quarter of the nominations remain harvested from some of the most flamboyently off-kilter musical landscapes, stretching for acres and acres across every genre. according to the bbc these are;

fionn regan, the token irishman who writes, sings and plays folk akin to bob dylan;

maps, or james chapman. probably the most impressive undiscovered artist working off a 16-track recorder in his northampton home before having his ambient and euphoric ode to spiritualized polished by bjork's producer valgeir sigurdsson and arranged by sigur ros mixer ken yhomas in iceland, and;

basquiat strings, a collection of classically trained, jazz mmersed musicians who play as session instrumentalists on top of recording their own material.

excluding arctic monkeys, basquiat strings are the only group to receive a second nomination in the mercury music prize's history, but unlike the snowy apes they didn't actually win it last time around.

and so it seems that as long as the majority of genres are catered for and some of the little people are getting a piece of the greater-record-sales-pie pie, those clever people at the mercury music prize can throw into the hat any tom dick or alex whom has appeared on a nme awards tour/show. still we might be on for a bit of drama in that if the yorkshire quartet do manage to bag a second consecutive award it will be the first time in the near pointless awards history.

pointless? surely not you say? the people behind the prize state it exists solely to champion UK music by promoting the 12 albums of the year by british and irish artists. this is all very well and good but who decides what are 'the 12 albums of the year' across every musical niche imaginable? a bunch of number crunching accountants at the event's sponsor, nationwide? i doubt it. who are the people behind the prize anyway? how do we know their opinion is valid? after all in 1997 when roni size reprazent won the gong they had also listed the spice girls debut album.

then there's the prize. not a record deal as 99.9% of the artists are already signed. Or anything of any real worth for that matter. the artists recieve a sum of money in the region of 70,000 squid. that's £70,000 that won't even touch the sides of the band's by now vast trouser pockets as they jingle already fat with brass. for this reason it's even more pleasing when a relative unkown wins the accolade.

so here's to hoping that the mercury won't become the music industry's booker prize anytime soon but that it does become a little more transparent in it's workings. let's also hope that the view's happy go lucky underdog anthem, 'a song for the buskers', will motivate the judges to vote away from the nme centrefolds and divert the prize money elsewhere rather than toward the spitting amy winehouse.

A suggestion: Make the mercury music prize an award to champion brand new leftfield acts taking their first baby steps in the lion pit that is the music business.

the 12 acts and albums nominated to recieve the mercury music prize 2007 are:

Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford - Basquiat Strings
Bat For Lashes - Fur and Gold
Dizzee Rascal - Maths and English
Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
Maps - We Can Create
New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
Fionn Regan - The End of History
Jamie T - Panic Prevention
The View - Hats Off to the Buskers
Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
The Young Knives - Voices of Animals and Men

Words: Dean Samways
Images: Google