20 Years of the Mercury Prize - Winners Poll

okay apparently my breaking point is "One day I will grow up to be a beautiful woman"

ha I am pretty sure I hated Arctic Monkeys last time I heard them and now, post Antony, they sound like the greatest band on Earth

Kinda what I was getting at. In that Antony was a great winner mostly because of how much it fucked people off.

It's hard to see the intensely annoying aspects of a band as a positive when you are among the ppl getting annoyed.

As usual Tim, you have most eloquently summed up why I should be enjoying this more than I do, and I appreciate that. I dug out New Forms again only a couple of months ago, having not really listened to it since it first came out. The only thing that I object to in your post is the "received wisdom" thing, because frankly I can't help not being moved by something if it doesn't move me - this is not a parroting of opinion as I've held it since I first heard the album; so as far as I know this opinion is nothing but my own. But hey, I love hearing other's points of view when summarised the way you did.

No problems with crossover appeal - that's a good thing in my book. My secondary issue lies in the ostensible justification of drum'n'bass by trying to compare it to another completely different style of music (jazz) so as to make it more palatable to non-dance listeners when really it should be appreciated on its own merits (i.e. as dance music).

What can I say? At the end of the day it's simply not my bag. People appreciate music based on different values and these don't correlate so well with mine. As a landmark record that went on to influence perhaps the subtler and more experimental side of music: that I agree. And maybe at the time I was still wrapped up in my frantic jungle/aardkore schism, and certainly not tuned in enough to other developments in d'n'b to fully understand that.

On reassessing, it's still a pretty flat-sounding record to my ears (don't want to use the word "wallpaper" because it's certainly more than that), and while I've grown to love the more nuanced styles of dance (minimal house for example) over the last several years, the tunes just skim and scoot around in the background - my mind forgets they're there, which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant - it just is.

I'd like to start a thread about listening to music in a different environment from which it's intended. A big part of Reprazent (and drum'n'bass and dance and rock to an extent) is that it should be heard loud - preferably live in Roni Size's case. Not having access to decent clubs for most of my life, I grew up hearing dance on some pretty shitty home stereo systems. These days I mostly listen to it on headphones: moderately better but I often feel I have to hypnotise myself in order to imagine what it would sound like on a decent bass unit. For one, you can't feel bass vibrations in your body when limiting yourself to earphones.

I'm not even 2 minutes in and all I keep thinking is "won't someone save that poor baby goat oh wait that's his singing voice"

― Tal Berkowitz - Vaccine advocate (DJP), Thursday, 8 September 2011 21:35 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

If Antony and Joanna Newsom did an album together I think your head might explode ;-)

Not a very big fan at all, but I'm always kind of impressed at how powerful Arctic Monkeys can sound compared to a lot of mid-00's indie. Speaking of soundsystems, if you'd ever attended an indie night circa that year, it blew the competition out the window.

yeah actually the thing that is striking me about this is that there is an unambiguous, driving rhythm section here; the crispness of the drums in particular is really viscerally satisfying and definitely making me more amenable to this than I would normally expect (see above Gomez reaction for contrast)

xxxxpost you're allowed not to like the album, but all the stuff about sanitising jungle and coffee tables is received wisdom.

my secondary issue lies in the ostensible justification of drum'n'bass by trying to compare it to another completely different style of music (jazz) so as to make it more palatable to non-dance listeners when really it should be appreciated on its own merits (i.e. as dance music).

There is a long history of dance music that uses jazz (and soul and funk and reggae and hip hop and etc.) samples though, and the point of this by and large is not to make the music more palatable to non-dance listeners, but to generate friction between the sample source and the groove.

Some idiot critics and listeners might seize on that in the wrong way (as per your quote) but it's pretty clear that this is not what Roni Size was doing. I'd say the first Goldie album (which I like too) is a much more appropriate target of that criticism.

We wouldn't complain about, say, Moodymann in these terms - mainly because he's never crossed over as much. But this is why working backwards from outcome (winning the mercury music prize) to intention is so fraught.

oh I kind of glossed over Badly Drawn Boy; I WONDER WHY

I'm kind of impressed with Klaxons' attempt to do something different, even if it's mostly terrible. At least they have a drummer.

There is a long history of dance music that uses jazz (and soul and funk and reggae and hip hop and etc.) samples though, and the point of this by and large is not to make the music more palatable to non-dance listeners, but to generate friction between the sample source and the groove.

Some idiot critics and listeners might seize on that in the wrong way (as per your quote) but it's pretty clear that this is not what Roni Size was doing. I'd say the first Goldie album (which I like too) is a much more appropriate target of that criticism.

We wouldn't complain about, say, Moodymann in these terms - mainly because he's never crossed over as much. But this is why working backwards from outcome (winning the mercury music prize) to intention is so fraught.

Sampling sources from other styles doesn't compare you to those styles necessarily. If I were to make a juke track that sampled Jacques Brel, Chicago bass wouldn't be the new chanson. But I get your point - I was put off New Forms because of how drum'n'bass was then being pedalled, mostly by pundits and journos and bandwagonjumpers rather than the artists themselves. So yeah, it is unfair to pass judgement in that way. I guess in some ways it's easy to get put off by external media rather than the message itself. Electro was a great laugh until Topman changed their whole line to day-glo pink and yellow and then it just started getting a bit sickening. As a peripheral listener, the younger me would have been more influenced and subsequently put-off by such, as you say, idiotic quotes.

y'all the Speech Debelle album is great, I think many of you are overly harsh re: the Tracy Chapmanisms because IMO they work

Not sure Roni Size's Reprazent tour was better than the album. I really enjoyed the album on release but walked out of the live show.

So I'm giving this another spin before a bit.

"for a bit"

Do you remember the thread started when I made ill-advised claims about Underworld's drum programming and 90s d 'n b, Tim F? I had a look for it, but couldn't find it. Thought it might be pertinent here.

xp DNB closes to rap is true, pretty much all old school dnb'ers were hip hop heads before the whole rave thing, even listen to alot of early uk dance stuff it has alot of hip hop in it(bomb the bass, depth charge etc)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

OK, so I need to make my mind up quickly on this. Interesting to revisit these in order. Some confirmed as enduring classics (Portishead), others as played-out passing pleasures (Franz Ferdinand), others as unarguable WTF-were-they-thinkings (dear God, the M People album is shockingly poor once you get past the singles), and there were a couple whose appeal was lost on me at the time, but which I can now get right behind. So, with that in mind, and to my slight amazement, I'm voting for Roni Size/Reprazent.

he M People album is shockingly GREAT once you get past the singles

Went "Dummy". A worst poll would be more interesting IMO.

That happened in 2007. M People walked it, followed by Gomez.

WORSTEST ALBUM TO WIN MERCURY MUSICS PRIZE!

i just can't with people who think pulp are better than m people

can't what?

Have Sex / a pint / dance / what?

I have had a pint with Lex so it can't be that.

Hey, me too.. and then we went to a rave, so...

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

portishead my arse.

Portisarse - Bummy

fuck this shit

I am more confused by Badly Drawn Boy coming in 5th; regardless of how I feel about them, the top 4 albums have enough recognizable support around here to make their placings a given but I thought everyone detested BDB

(ftr I think the correct album won)

I don't. (detest I mean, I also think the right album won)...

I dunno, BDB... The album is great, but he seemed to have a very steep 'run out of ideas' curve.

.. also, he seemed to have a very strong 'irritation' factor, one small thing going wrong could cause a mighty strop on-stage. That tends to upset people, and rightly so.

Every one talked about Elliot Smith being 'better', but the one CD I got of his, ummm... Nice enough, but didn't really win me over.

'Once Around The Block' is a fantastic song. At the time it made me buy BDB's album, which was a huge disappointment. Apart from that song, which to this day is great.

i love a lot of BDB songs, esp from HOTB and the about a boy soundtrack. and one or two from the next one. after that he became entirely unlistenable. some of the most grating shit i've made myself listen to.

voted xx just over dummy. similar albums in some ways - they both feel real modern. products of their times perhaps - dummy is all 90s bombast (i remember really liking "roads" at first, which quickly faded) while xx is pretty subdued and cautious. fwiw i find third and xx super super similar, and at times i wonder if third is the superior album to dummy. def still feeling my xx pick, and real surprised dummy stomped it so hard

"Bombast"? Dummy? "Bombast"?

"roads" is basically THE most melodramatic song ever

a lot of dummy is pretty chill but there are still some srsly emo lyrics there

Missed this poll, but echo 'the right album won'

the snore album snored

Aren't all these albums, by definition, overplayed though? And if that's the case, any winner could be accused of being a boring choice?

yeah exackly this is why lists, polls, awards, and shit that wins lists polls and awards sucks and is wank

I don't think anyone could accuse Speech Debelle's album of being overplayed.

Poor Speech Debelle

Speech Impediment Debelle

When she won, did peopl eyell out "Speech! Speech! Speech! " ?

That would explain her length of award acceptance.

Speech Débile

@campbellclaret
Alastair Campbell
met Speech Debelle at a Labour/arts do last night. Really nice, and she didn't laugh when I showed her the song I wrote about Elvis
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