20 Years of the Mercury Prize - Winners Poll

lol @ this list

voted Screamadelica

Crikey, I appear to own 15 of these on CD, plus two more on CDR. And the only album I've never heard all the way through is M People's Elegant Slumming.

yuck

v. tempted to vote M-People but will probly vote Roni

and Screamadelica is their worst album.

01. boy in da corner
02. let england shake
03. dummy

2005: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
2006: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2007: The Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
2008: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

Feel my eyes glazing over completely at this run.

Dummy, easy.

Some good and great albums on this list, but this is a grueling sequence:

1998: Gomez - Bring It On
1999: Talvin Singh - OK
2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Not a huge fan of any of these really. Many of them are albums I feel I'm "supposed" to revere, partly due to their canonisation. If I had to go for one it'd have to be Screamadelica or perhaps Different Class.

Dummy, by quite some distance.

Duh Dummy.

and Screamadelica is their worst album.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 6:35 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest

u crazy

assuming alfred's never heard Sonic Flower Groove for a start

A whole lot of mediocrity on here barring PJ and Portishead. Thats what happens when you get commitees. Badly Drawn Boy is better than The Unutterable Fall? And thats just one example.

yikes

Screamadelica - yeah okay can't front still got a lot of goodness but it's the producers' record and it's probably half an hour too long at least
Suede - yeah okay can't front some good maudlin mopery but it wd make a good EP maybe
Elegant Slumming - just goes heavy hit after heavy hit plus the outrage is still hilarious 18 years on
Dummy - can't front still pretty classic fucked if i ever want to listen to it tho which is a poor showing for a drunky blues record in our house
Different Class - i'm mad fond of "Something Changed", the rest is yeah well it was a different time wannit?
New Forms - this is still fucking A in most respects
Bring It On - Captain Quornheart
OK - this is a perfectly dece record as long as you never have to hear a BBC journo talk about it
The Hour of Bewilderbeast - should've been The 20 Minutes of Bewilderbeast amirite?
Stories from the City - me and PJ only really hit off on the occasional track tbh

I'm going to listen to the whole lot before voting. A minority view, I'm sure, but I liked that Gomez album a lot at the time. Also, people round here have been far too dismissive of the Arctic Monkeys debut. Can't imagine that Badly Drawn Boy has worn too well, and subsequent releases have dented my love of the Antony & the Johnsons. Have avoided the Portishead debut for years, due to over-playing at the time, and Franz Ferdinand's initial appeal quickly palled. Need to re-assess the Roni Size - suspect it might hold up well. In my refractory period with the xx - still feels too soon to revisit.

1992: Primal Scream - Screamadelica

SHITE

1993: Suede - Suede

SHITE

1994: M People - Elegant Slumming

this is okay

1995: Portishead - Dummy

AMAZING

1996: Pulp - Different Class

SHITE

1997: Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms

okay i guess

1998: Gomez - Bring It On

BEYOND SHITE

1999: Talvin Singh - OK

GIVE A FUCK

2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

FUCKING TWENTY PENCE BUSKER, FUCKING DIE

2001: P J Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

GODDESS REWARDED FOR SLUMMING IT, PROOF OF MERCURY PANEL'S SHITE TASTE

2002: Ms. Dynamite - A Little Deeper

LOVE, WILL ALWAYS DEFEND

2003: Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner

FLUKE AMAZING WINNER

2004: Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

BEYOND SHITE

2005: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

NEARLY LISTENABLE BUT...NOT QUITE

2006: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

BEYOND BEYOND SHITE

2007: The Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future

LOLLLLLLLLL (AT EVERYONE WHO LIKED THIS)

2008: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

COMPLETELY BAFFLING, ALSO SHITE

2009: Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy

BLESS YOU

2010: the xx - XX

AMAZING

2011: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

AMAZING

A Little Deeper - ironic title
Boy in Da Corner - ok this is still unfuckwithable
Franz Ferdinand - family connection precludes me honestly assessing this, still think half of it bangs
I Am a Bird Now - love the dude, fuck all y'all
Whatever People Blah Blah Blah - wasn't going to student discos by this stage in life jeezus i hate that one that goes "what a shabby man" u smug twats
Myths of the Near Future - step away from the Grace record you cunts
Elbow - not unpleasant when they're mumbling
Speech Debelle - can't front never heard it, will side with anything that turd Corden doesn't like
XX - like Dummy except i couldn't be arsed in the first place
Let England Shake - it's 2011, i've got a lot on my plate, let's just leave it eh?

if i was asked for the worst in this lot, i would say pulp, and if asked for the best, i would say ms dynamite

both on principle

god pulp really are the fucking worst band ever though. i literally want to punch jarvis DICKHEAD cocker in the face

and Screamadelica is their worst album.

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 6:35 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest

u crazy

yeah I don't really get where Alfred's coming from on this one. I mean they have some TERRIBLE records

i didn't know antony was a britishes!

voted dummy

Has to be between the first two. Going for "Suede" in the long run, just ahead of "Screamadelica". Otherwise, Elbow, Pulp and Franz Ferdinand are the best efforts here.

It looks like I'm the only one voting for the one I'm voting for.

Speech who?

Probably should have said "Vanishing Point is a more deserving winner," but we can make these claims about a lot of these artists' catalogues.

I love Elegant Slumming, Different Class and Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

went with Elegant Slumming

pulp or dizzee. don't know if i've heard any of these in full since franz f.

Such a zeitgeisty collection of records
like, "what was your favourite age?"

I rep for Hour of the Bewilderbeast, but I won't vote for it.

I love a thread where ILX can amusingly trash a load of shit so-called experts used to adore. More please.

1-dizzee
2-arctics
3-portis

Probably should have said "Vanishing Point is a more deserving winner," but we can make these claims about a lot of these artists' catalogues.

We could have, and "Vanishing Point" is also an excellent album, but outside "contrarian" ILM, "Screamadelica" is generally considered to be their masterpiece, among critics and indie audiences alike.

god pulp really are the fucking worst band ever though. i literally want to punch jarvis DICKHEAD cocker in the face

― lex pretend, Thursday, 8 September 2011 00:22 (9 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, worse than hitler

there was a band called hitler, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwsWGLLub30

This is what I found...

Its no good taking the piss out of Michael Jackson when your legacy is a load of landfill brit-pop shite and a decades worth of Peel session debris. Pulp were truly dreadful, just pumped up chancers who got lucky. The fifth form doggerel of JC on Common People is the apex of absolute shiteness. The Auteurs had already nailed it with The Upper Classes. Looking at this Mercury list makes me feel queasy and angry at how its nearly always the tossers that win in life.

winning the mercury prize |= winning in life

Hey, Luke Haines, welcome to ILM! (xp)

Talentless chancers, yeah! Coming round here, punching our peados - who do they think they are? All those singles were rubbish weren't they? Disco 2000, Es & Whizz, Common People, Do You Remember the First Time, Babies - who likes those? A: No one! We only bought them to throw in the bin.

2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

FUCKING TWENTY PENCE BUSKER, FUCKING DIE

You've just reminded me of that viz cartoon, in which Badly Drawn Boy is desperately busking outside Natwest, and the caption below is "Badly Overdrawn Boy".

My favourite Viz strip was "Vidal Baboon"

Luke Haines otm

The Auteurs had already nailed it with The Upper Classes.

Did Luke Haines have a strand of uncertainty with regard his position in the social strata in the lyrics? Or was it pure invective?

I mean, I also wrote a version of a similar scenario, way back in the day. It was called "Lichtenstein". It wasn't great, but.

I voted for Different Class, by the way, risking the opprobrium of various people on here.

xxxpost Vidal Baboon LOL

i gots no problem with people repping for pedestrian indie as long as they don't mind a little banter in return

god pulp really are the fucking worst band ever though. i literally want to punch jarvis DICKHEAD cocker in the face

so otm

mum emailed me to tell me "dj harvey that dj you and your father like won the mercury music prize" haha

i gots no problem with people repping for pedestrian indie as long as they don't mind a little banter in return

if that's where you're setting the bar i'm not sure what in the way of indie wouldn't fall under it.

indie music is just the worst.

Yeah, that King Creosote, for one

it's just rubbish innit? just blokes meowling in stupid accents about how the quality of the rain was better in the '60s.

xxxxp preferred him when he played for AFC Wimbledon.

Who? Glenn Mulcaire?

and don't get me started on the grebos...

Was MC Harvey, not DJ Harvey, sorry.

and don't get me started on gomez. i would like to PUNCH all of them in the DICK extremely HARD

with my FIST

DICK...HARD...FIST...

o_O

Its no good taking the piss out of Michael Jackson when your legacy is a load of landfill brit-pop shite and a decades worth of Peel session debris. Pulp were truly dreadful, just pumped up chancers who got lucky. The fifth form doggerel of JC on Common People is the apex of absolute shiteness.

otmfm. had an argument in the pub about that last night - everyone lionises cocker for that dickhead stunt but it's like, c'mon son stack MJ's music up against JC's and there's only one possible winner, and it's not the man peddling trite ~social commentary~ that only seems smart cuz it was concurrent with fucking neanderthals like oasis

god franz ferdinand are a bunch of CUNTS aren't they? they deserve to get KICKED in the HEAD very HARD by FEET

SO HARD... literally!

ehhh -- MJ rules but the spectacle of wiry uncertain Cocker destroying Jackson's well-choreographed display of kitch was great television.

"wiry, uncertain" = ripped to the tits on coke

nb nowt wrong with being ripped to the tits on coke but let's not buy this "David vs Super-Goliath" version eh?

cos it was much more like "hype toddler shows off in front of mates" imo

OTM, still MJ deserved it, no matter how good he was

i often think that if MJ had beaten the crap out of him there and then his career wd have never dipped

He's a lover, not a fighter

and really "oddball reclusive black guy pretends to be Jesus in concert performance" is much more subversive and funny than "aging student doesn't like pop music"

tbh give me a pop star throwing jesus poses any day over a pop star trying cluelessly to be an Important Social Commentator

What's that Oasis song again, Heal The World?

though i guess MJ was trying to be both, lol

tbh give me a pop star throwing jesus poses any day over a pop star trying cluelessly to be an Important Social Commentator

Isn't that what Jacko was doing tho? Albeit in messianic megalomaniac mode?

oops (xp)

and really "oddball reclusive black guy pretends to be Jesus in concert performance" is much more subversive and funny

Maybe, if it actually had been subversive or funny

rephrase: if you're a pop star trying to be an Important Social Commentator, you damn well better accompany it with some jesus poses

Thing is, JCock was 'hero' to many for that stunt for years, but after MJackson died, the whole thing seems, um, I dunno, churlish?

Enjoying doglatin’s finessed irony here. Where’s ex-ILMer and “Toploder” fan Andy Paltridge when you need him?

xxpost jesus was famous for his flappy flappy arse wave

Romans didn't like that shit AT ALL

From Wikipedia

Pulp (band)

History (1978 - 2011):

Jarvis Cockhead spent 30 years striking ridiculous poses round the common room wearing the same knock-off Che t-shirt and quoting The Communist Manifesto at anyone who would bother listening to him. Then one day he decided to punch Michael Jackson. Then he grew a beard. Jarvis Cocker is gay.

jesus poses > important social commentary >>>>>>>> ~self-important lex commentary~

Different Class? Shitferent Class you mean...

xp It wasn't Jarvis v pop (which he loves) or Jarvis v Michael Jackson's back catalogue, it was Jarvis v creepy, messianic hubris. Not his finest hour by any means but balls to pro-Earth Song revisionism.

Still a prick after all these years, DL, I see.

Glad you got that off your chest.

It's amazing what you can do with duct tape and Onken strawberry mousse.

OMG I understood that.

Elegant Slumming, easily. Most of the other stuff I've heard is either bland (Portishead, Roni Size, Talving Singh), irritating (Dizzee, Pulp, Primal Scream) or shite. The Ms. Dynamite album has few good tunes, but it's wildly uneven.

I think it might actually be Let England Shake. Umming and aahing between that and Dummy. Boy In Da Corner would be in there but for the weak section in the middle - I never want to listen to it all the way through.

2009: Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy

BLESS YOU

This is positive contrarianism gone mad though.

Antony And The Johnsons winning was a bit of a treasured moment for me because Conor McNicholas's stuttering incredulity was such a picture. Loved that record at the time, find a whole hour's worth of Antony's voice a bit hard going and treacly now. Also it broke up several years of haircut indie domination.

Jarvis loves "Pop", not the same thing as pop music

that Antony album is pretty short and sweet tbf

I didn't know before reading this thread that Antony & The Johnsons is an UK act! Somehow they've always sounded like they were from New York to me.

in honesty my favourite of these - certainly most listened - is (disc 2 of) New Forms.

But I like the Primal Scream, M People, Portishead, Pulp, Ms Dynamite, Dizzee Rascal, xx and PJ Harvey albums as well.

they're called the suburbs

I think it's a kind of Jimi Hendrix thing with Antony.

But yeah, they're okay. It's just that as Nina Simone fan I've never been able to deal with how much the singer tries to sound like her.

(xxx-post)

xp Antony was born in the UK though based in the US at the time - there was a minor fuss at the time about his eligibility.

but the irony is their music is actually about small town life

1992: Primal Scream - Screamadelica
Voting for Screamadelica now is like admitting defeat, bit like buying Beatles albums because you can't think of anything else you want.

1993: Suede - Suede
Nothing that makes Brett Anderson happy should be allowed, anywhere.

1994: M People - Elegant Slumming
Not down with the positive revisionism on this one, would probably be more open to it if it didn't have Heather Small's voice on them. But it beat His & Hers, and that at least annoyed Mark Radcliffe.

1995: Portishead - Dummy
A++++ classic for all time.

1996: Pulp - Different Class
Like it, don't love it, bar a few tracks.

1997: Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms
After living in a student halls of residence when this was huge, I honestly never want to hear it ever again.

1998: Gomez - Bring It On
Hahahahaha you clowns.

1999: Talvin Singh - OK
See Gomez.

2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast
Secretly like some of this, blame it being on a lot over the right summer in the right place.

2001: P J Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Actually in danger of becoming underrated. I like this more than To Bring You My Love. Not the best PJ Harvey record in this poll, let alone overall.

2002: Ms. Dynamite - A Little Deeper
Terrific, not the best here.

2003: Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner
Terrific, not *quite* the best here.

2004: Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
It's a really good job the Divine Comedy were never eligible to win.

2005: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
See previous post.

2006: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Lol.

2007: The Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
Seriously lol.

2008: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Don't care.

2009: Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
Who gives a shit.

2010: the xx - XX
DULLDULLDULL.

2011: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Amazing.

^^^ mostly brilliant and correct

all the winners of the mercury prize are confessional albums about small town life, the fact that the winners represent a broad sphere of british life just goes to show how many different towns in Britain there actually are

Matt that Primal Scream precis shd be stickered on all future copies of Screamadelica

What's wrong with Heather Small's voice?!

She had a TV show over here where she read out the names of anybody convicted of shoplifting during the last week, it put a lot of people off her Tuomas.

Tho u haven't lived until u've heard "Terry Ganton, 25, 6 months conditional discharge" to the tune of "Sight for Sore Eyes".

Those were extra verses of "What have you done today to make you feel proud" though.

xpost TIMING!

Ah, okay. No need to put down her previous work because of that, though! I mean, Thriller is still a great album even if you don't approve of Micheal Jackson's caviar smuggling ring.

(xx-post)

What's wrong with Heather Small's voice?!

We don't like it, so there

You're the Queen?

At one point Heather actually got paid by Woolworths to search for the Aero inside your coat iirc

Heather Small's voice obviously isn't as bad as say, the gargly bloke from Gomez, but everything else on that album is so obviously inept that it's barely a talking point, whereas I usually love euphoric early 90s diva house so the voice getting in the way becomes twice as annoying.

The word "foghorn" comes to mind, not as strongly as when listening to Florence + the Machine but...

She had a TV show over here where she read out the names of anybody convicted of shoplifting during the last week, it put a lot of people off her Tuomas.

― placeholder for weak pun (Noodle Vague), Thursday, September 8, 2011

This doens't tell the whole story, think you are being kind of disingenuous here, Payne Stewart out of the arctic monkeys was also on that show and I don't recall him getting the same levels of criticism

Wait, I don't get it? You hate her voice because everything else on the album is worse than it? What?

She's the Dorothy Squires of "euphoric early 90s diva house", that's a reference you should have no trouble with I am sure, Tuomas

Wait, I don't get it? You hate her voice because everything else on the album is worse than it? What?

No I mean the exact opposite. I was talking about the Gomez album where everything else is as bad as the voice.

Also, anyone repping for the XX album please remember that this is David Cameron's sex music.

1992: Primal Scream - Screamadelica
Voted this one cos I've been listening to it again. By no means the monster of a record it was made out to be and the second side has one too many sandbags. Still, as a Weatherall advocate, I have to give it its dues.

1993: Suede - Suede
Not heard the whole thing. I quite like the singles off of it. I always feel as though I have to check over my shoulder with one hand hovering over ALT-TAB button when I listen to these guys.

1994: M People - Elegant Slumming
A bit smooth and adult for me - makes me think of people trying out sofas in DFS. At least it's not the Lighthouse Family. I liked "Don't Look any Further" when it came out - sounded like the Sanatogen advert - but didn't realise it was a cover for a long time. "One Night In Heaven" and "Moving On Up" are more refreshing and upbeat than I remember them.

1995: Portishead - Dummy
I actually owned this at the time. This and The Bends were my teenage misery soundtracks, so I've never gone back to Dummy at all.

1996: Pulp - Different Class
Have never actually listened to this all the way through - Pulp are a one-song-at-a-time band for me. A true singles band.

1997: Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms
Coffeetable Jungle. Apart from one or two tracks I always despised this for putting an acceptable face on drum'n'bass. Polishing up all the ruff edges and adding jazz-wank live instrumentation just goes against my values, basically.

1998: Gomez - Bring It On
Meh, I only heard a couple of songs off it. It was okay I guess. Pretty unremarkable students-go-blues.

1999: Talvin Singh - OK
Not heard it. I'm sure it's "OK", woo-hoop!

2000: Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast
A load of fucking bullshit.

2001: P J Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Already expressed my feelings about PJ. Trying to rectify it through increased exposure.

2002: Ms. Dynamite - A Little Deeper
I like everything I've heard, but not check this yet.

2003: Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner
2003 was a weird year for me when I pretty much missed out on any new music. As such I'm ashamed to say I haven't heard this.

2004: Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Not my cup o'cha.

2005: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
Passable.

2006: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Arctic Shitkeys

2007: The Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
The Cacksons more like

2008: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Zzzzz.....

2009: Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
Me neither..

2010: the xx - XX
Cold cold music. Never quite got into this.

2011: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
See 2001.

i think if Roni Size wanted to make a coffee table d'n'b album he was well within his rights but as Tim F sorta points out above Disc 2 isn't like that at all and when he made Disc 1 the live instrumentation and songs and shininess was new and fun and fitted right in iirc

i like the ones i haven't heard more than the ones i have heard, from that list

some of the ones you haven't heard are terrible ffs, get a clue

you should hear the ones i have heard

1997: Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms
Coffeetable Jungle. Apart from one or two tracks I always despised this for putting an acceptable face on drum'n'bass. Polishing up all the ruff edges and adding jazz-wank live instrumentation just goes against my values, basically.

you will always be wrong

new forms is a great record

do you hate shanks & bigfoot for doing the same thing to garage?

all music ever shd be ruff and shouty and sound like it was recorded in that railway carriage out of I Didn't Know You Cared by feral, fingerless tweens

the live instrumentation and songs and shininess was new and fun

flat, repetitive and lacking in momentum, you mean? I hear very little fun on this record. TBF the first two tracks are good enough - i liked high potent too.

fecking repetitive dance music

all music ever shd be ruff and shouty and sound like it was recorded in that railway carriage out of I Didn't Know You Cared by feral, fingerless tweens

― the Dorothy Squires of mean-spirited moaning and cynicism (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 8 September 2011 12:49 (19 seconds ago) Bookmark

Now yer talking.

hey, i was fifteen when new forms came out - you were lucky to even know what a coffeetable was back then.

Let's be really real, New Forms is way less coffee table than nearly every other drum & bass artist album released between 1995 and 1997.

ach, I'm being facetious, obviously. this is all based on recollection at the time. i wasn't hugely into drum'n'bass at the time, but i do remember hearing new forms and feeling as though it was bleached of all the things i did like about the genre.

Tim OTM. The beats were great on that record, especially compared to what Bukem or Alex Reece were doing.

I never gave a shit about "coffee table". I remember d'n'b purists getting irate over Everything But the Girl's Walking Wounded and it just seemed pissy and irrelevant to me. Just the usual dance scene politics.

Just remembered how much I love the Bahamadia track on New Forms.

"Walking Wounded" is awesome btw.

Why does the concept of "jazz wank" or "noodling" etc have so much prominence in British music conversations. It's such a loaded slur, British people love ridiculing complexity.

Did you ever hear the Reprazent remix of "New Forms" (the Bahamadia track) DL?

coffeetable was a good thing in my book. that kruder and dorfmeister dj kicks was my favourite cd around this time

PROG

xpost

K&D Sessions and K&D DJ Kicks definitely coffeetable, and maybe the pinnacle of the form.

British people love ridiculing complexity.

Brian Ferneyhough begs to differ

http://www.theartsdesk.com/media/k2/items/cache/496147e8066b3f90ac3104e3077335ac_XL.jpg

i wasn't referring to "complexity". i like complexity in places. new forms isn't that complex a record.

New Forms (Remix):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrB13rcDDv4

Hmm. Spring Heel Jack weren't really coffee table D&B either.

xp I remember that remix Tim. I was editing reviews at Mixmag at the time so I got a ton of 12"s from that album.

Walking Wounded was classic - unlike many d'n'b producers' vocal tracks it was a brilliant song with or without that production. That album has far outlasted all the petty shit it got at the time, especially as Ben Watt has devoted himself to dance music ever since.

like i was joking about up there, i think it's a lingering idiocy from the punk critical hegemony, the equating of youth and rawness and enthusiastic shamateurism with excitement and the insistence on excitement as the only game in town. boring boring fetishes one and all.

i've never heard the talvin singh (actually i've only heard about 7 of these in total but nm), was it really so worthless? and if so what kind of worthless was it?

everytime i see its name it's such a pure rush of 1999 boho lolz, i almost feel wistful for it.

'traveller' was uh pleasant no?

What Christgau had to say about (most of) the winners:

Screamadelica:

Suede:
Make-or-break is "Sleeping Pills," when Brett Anderson drawls/whines/croons "You're a water sign, and I'm an air sign" so tunefully, repetitively, naggingly, inescapably that you swear he said "I'm an asshole" even though he pronounces "air sign" a lot more clearly than the line about Valium that follows. It's fingernail-on-blackboard city for anyone who doesn't believe Marc Bolan is Chuck Berry, and at first I couldn't stand it. Now it's a fave moment on this appropriately overhyped, surprisingly well-crafted coming out. More popwise and also more literary than the Smiths at a comparable stage, Suede's collective genderfuck projects a joyful defiance so rock and roll it obliterates all niggles about literal truth. If you think their victories over depression have nothing to do with you, be grateful you can make do with a report from the front. A-

M People:
Perfect records are so rare that it's foolish to cavil about the scope of the great disco album Soul II Soul and Yaz never got near (although Donna Summer did once). Each five-minute song clicks into its slot on the Michael Pickering-Paul Heard beats and hooks and special effects, with low tenor Heather Small gender-bending her diva devotion and deep, robust, confident shout over the top. What's a rock and roller to do with such music? Proud Heather puts it perfectly in her angriest moment: "Take it like a man baby if that's what you are." A

Portishead:
Sade for androids ("Sour Times," "Wandering Star") *

Pulp:
This year won't produce a more indispensable song than "Common People," but that doesn't mean young Americans know enough about the bourgeoisie to get it. And when sex gods are added up, Bryan-Ferry-plus-Blurandoasis won't equal George Michael. But beyond his devotion to songcraft, Cocker isn't Bluroroasis--Culture Club with lyrics is more like it. Smart and glam, swish and het, its jangle subsumed beneath swelling crescendos or nagging keybs and its rhythms steeped in rave, this isn't pat enough for the disco-still-sucks crowd. And although Cocker's stick-to-itiveness over four expendable albums suggests that he's attained a measure of maturity, his breakthrough is a mutation, not a fruition. If "Common People" should fall short, I recommend Island proceed directly to "Something Changed," a happy love song every bit as clever and realistic as his class war song. A-

Roni Size:
in the mildly overrated tradition of Massive Attack and Soul II Soul ("Digital," "Electricks") **

Gomez:
Really the roots-rock-they mean it, man ("Whipping Piccadilly," "Love Is Better Than a Warm Trombone"). ***

Talvin Singh:
Not reviewed

Badly Drawn Boy:
Damon Gough sounds a lot sadder than he is. It's more like he muses a lot, is easily distracted. On the page, "You left your shoes in the tree with me/I'll wear them to your house tonight" looks hopelessly stupid; on record, it's quite wry. Nor is he undemonstrative--unlike low-affect codependent Elliott Smith, he fusses so much over his tunes, crooning and segueing and arranging and stuff, that you know he loves them to death. You can imagine him being just as nice to a real live girl one of these years. A-

PJ Harvey (1):
If Nirvana and Robert Johnson are rock's essence for you, so's To Bring You My Love. But if you believe the Beatles and George Clinton had more to say in the end, this could be the first PJ album you adore as well as admire. It's a question of whether you use music to face your demons or to vault right over them. Either way the demons will be there, of course, and nobody's claiming they won't catch you by the ankle and bring you down sometime--or that facing them doesn't give you a shot at running them the fuck over. Maybe that's how Harvey got to where she could enjoy the fruits of her own genius and sexuality. Or maybe she just met the right guy. Tempos and pudendum juiced, she feels the world ending and feels immortal on the very first track. The other 11 songs she takes from there. A+

Ms Dynamite:
If all beats are created equal, then Niomi Daley's spare garage is as strong as Kimberley Jones's thick hip-hop. If flow is as flow does, then her earned plasticity is as fresh as Lauryn Hill's easy liquidity. If singing is basically a matter of sincerity, then her straitened cadences express as complexly as Erykah Badu's high-flying scats. If conscious is enough, then "Tell me how many Africans died for the baguettes on your Rolex" will educate as deep as "Black like the perception of who on welfare." But good music isn't the same thing as a catchy feature story, and this Mercury Prize winner has less flavor than a plate of mashed. She's biracial and the eldest of 10 children and manifestly good-hearted, and when she goes ragga on the way out I wish she hadn't been groomed for something bigger and blander. But she made her choice. C+

Dizzee Rascal:
The first thing to understand about Dizzee is that his fundamental appeal is musical, and the second is that there's very little music there. Break down a track and often you'll find only an electro beat--at most three or four sparse elements, rarely long on sustain or tune. Yet as someone who mocked the minimal means of U.K. garage and considered the Streets barely music at all, I was captivated by Dizzee's sound the moment I heard the import. His adolescent gulps and yowls are street-Brit with a Jamaican liquidity, as lean, eccentric, and arresting as the beats. The voice also lends a comic, claustrophobic vulnerability to rhymes whose brilliance varies, though their winning youthfulness does not. Whether he can grow as a lyricist as he struggles to comprehend his success is the old conundrum. The smarts he's got. The right advice will be hard to come by. A-

Franz Ferdinand:
Young enough to only work when they need the money, a musical tradition worth fighting for ("Michael," "Jacqueline"). ***

Antony & the Johnsons:
Whose voice touches who is personal, but that doesn't mean Antony will ever reach as many humans as Aretha Franklin or Billie Holiday, and up against the archer Bryan Ferry, the artier Rufus Wainwright, and the grander Nina Simone, objective physical differences manifest themselves: he's thinner, drier, more strained. Not only is his willingness to express emotion commoner than indie denizens imagine, his failure to undercut that emotion with irony or humor is a spiritual weakness. Right, he suffers. But billions of humans have it worse, and while we who are luckier are morally obliged to remember that, we're not obliged to empathize with any of them. Those convinced of the metaphoric-political centrality of transgender issues and the AIDS epidemic will feel Antony's songs. Those who don't should find a record they enjoy. B-

Arctic Monkeys:
The great thing about this album is how untranscendent it is, as if these lads know the guitar-band pleasures are cons. Sing-along tunes? Breakneck momentum? Next-big-thing ambition? Saturday-night swindles every one. Instead Alex Turner and crew evoke club life as it is actually experienced. They sound like not knowing the doorman, like moving on a girl you think isn't pretty enough, like missing the bus in a leather jacket that doesn't keep out the cold. Many details are too U.K.-specific for Yank-yob gratification. But aesthetes will come to enjoy Turner's nuanced adenoids and his bandmates' thought-through arrangements. A-

Klaxons:

Elbow:
Not reviewed

Speech Debelle:
South Londoner's murmuring flow lets eavesdroppers connect her problems to their own--maybe even suggest solutions ("Daddy's Little Girl," "Finish This Album"). **

xx:
Their minimalism is so contained that as you warm against your better judgement to the well-spaced notes, subtle depth charges, and ostinato hooks with which they couch their gentle cool, you figure that the matched female-and-male drawls the music sets off will prove unworthy of further commitment. But soon you learn that these two Southwest London 20-year-olds--to leave out their ancillary and now departed guitarist and crucial but probably not generative young producer-drummer--aren't being minimal to prove they're any shade of cool. It's more like they're being minimal because they're shy. Rather than resorting to an obscurantism they're too decent for or feigning a sophistication few achieve, they trade ideas about intimacy as contemporaries, comrades, prospects, lovers, ex-lovers, and friends. It's hard to imagine their music getting much better. But it's not hard to imagine their lives getting much better. Which may be all their music needs. A

PJ Harvey (2):
Polly Jean Harvey was major when she meant to shake the world, a life project she gave up on after releasing her finest album in 2000--much of it set, as must be mere coincidence, in New York City. Creating a suite of well-turned if unnecessarily understated antiwar songs, she's a gifted, strong-willed minor artist bent on shaking England in particular. How much that work enriches anyone's understanding of World War I is open to a debate too niggling to pursue. What's certain is that her special interest in the Great War reflects the changing contours of her chosen chauvinism no less than her evolution from the rough-hewn Howlin Wolf she absorbed in downhome Dorsetshire toward the dulcet clarity of Lancashire's prog-folk Annie Haslam. "I live and die/through England/I live and die/through England"? You said it, lady--twice. B+

xp like the wire being all wide-eyed and insistent about TABLAS? AND DRUM N BASS? WITH SQUAREPUSHER? DO YOU SEE?. when did we grow so cold?

liking xgau's klaxons review there

xp It's the school of thought that thinks dance music is only pure when it's lowbrow and self-conscious "sophistication", especially if it dares to invoke jazz, is middlebrow pandering to the coffee-table crowd/indie kids/yuppies/dilettantes/whatever. Thing is, there are more than enough boring, guest-vox-packed, failed crossover albums to enforce that prejudice, and many of my favourite dance producers shoot themselves in the foot trying to do what they think "proper" albums should do but on the rare occasions when it's done well I see no point in knocking it just for not being raw.

Love most of xgau's write-ups but "Tempos and pudendum juiced" is a phrase to be avoided.

Primal Scream was a "Neither" icon and the Klaxons a "Dud" icon.

yes. yes it was.

Maybe that's how Harvey got to where she could enjoy the fruits of her own genius and sexuality. Or maybe she just met the right guy. Tempos and pudendum juiced, s.....(snip)

Unbelieveable, the idea that PJ Harvey made a perfect album because she'd finally had loads of sex.

Well, it was Vincent Gallo.

New Forms (Remix):

― Tim F, Thursday, 8 September 2011 13:21 (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

That was alright. I'm gonna say a few crass things here, mostly based on my attitude to the record when it came out. I won't pretend to be an expert on d'n'b, but I do enjoy it now and again and have been to a fair few raves in my time. Ask me who made what and when and I'm lost though. This track reminds me why I found New Forms so objectionable in the first place. It's the repetition. And no, this isn't a moan about "repetitive dance music", which is a bollocks argument - this is a moan about New Forms, and perhaps other d'n'b of its era. New Forms, to me, sounds particularly repetitive compared to other forms of jungle/d'n'b. Like many tracks on New Forms, it's based around the same break over and over and over and my ears get tired around the 3 or 4 minute mark. There are few breakdowns, build ups or variations and it's not THAT interesting a break to deserve that level of samey-ness. I'd enjoyed the ragga-fied clatter of jungle before, and the intensity and invention of a lot of the stuff that came after (I still adore 'Body Rock' by Andy C for example) - but this stuff, it doesn't move me. It starts off interestingly enough but just kind of "hangs" with the odd vocal snatch or flourish fading in and out for the full 5-6 minutes. If I'm gonna dance to it, I'm sorry but I need more oomph damnit! If I'm going to listen to it at home, then I need more going on. If I wanna chill out, then I prob won't listen to drum'n'bass in the first place.

*puts on blindfold* *back to the wall*

i dislike xgau's writing so much

listen to it from the drums up (d/latin xp) although ideally they needed to be seen and experienced live.

WHY LEX WHY?

I am so tempted to vote for Speech Debelle because I think I'm the only person on ILX with anything positive to say about that album

I too have positive things to say about the album (actually I said them on the blog at the time but anyway).

listen to it from the drums up (d/latin xp) although ideally they needed to be seen and experienced live.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Thursday, 8 September 2011 14:49 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

I'm sure they were fab live. I'd have liked to have seen them.

But that was another thing that pissed me off about these guys - suddenly it was "Hey hey people over 30, this is the exciting new sound of drum'n'bass on Jools Holland. No, not that silly jungle stuff - this has got real instruments made of real wood, so it's okay..." Hated that - winning the Mercury felt so token - suddenly d'n'b was this acceptable style of music that people like David Bowie could make a milquetoast record out of it and twat know-nothing commentators would say stuff like "drum'n'bass is the new jazz" (bleeeeeurrrghhhhh!)...

I guess this happens with a lot of music (dubstep par example), but this was the first time I'd been conscious of it.

Jazz has always been the new jazz, but hey.

winning the Mercury felt like he won me a lot of beer tokens

d/l xp: Well no, in this case it WAS the new jazz. Far more radical than the style bibles and 50 quid men of the period would have led you to believe. I wish they'd followed it through. Also Bowie's primary inspiration for going d&b was A Guy Called Gerald, not Reprazent.

I see little relationship between d'n'b and jazz (save the amen break and reprazent's use of a stand-up bass).

oh and that Horny Mutant Jazz track etc... but it wasn't jazz at all was it?

... aren't you a Squarepusher fan

I mean, perhaps I'm off the mark about this, but when forced to make a distinction between jungle and d'n'b, I've always thought of jungle as "breakbeat dancehall" and d'n'b as "breakbeat jazz".

d/l - this will take a while and a long article to explain fully and currently I don't really have time for either but I'll get back to it. for now, trust me.

xxpost sure, but i don't call squarepusher "jazz". just because a few artists sample jazz tracks or use jazz instruments don't make the whole scene "jazz" any more that rave was the new reggae because of "out of space". such quotes are straw clutching attempts at making d'n'b more palatable to people who wouldn't normally listen to dance music.

He was kind of a jazz musician, wasn't he?

I mean, perhaps I'm off the mark about this, but when forced to make a distinction between jungle and d'n'b, I've always thought of jungle as "breakbeat dancehall" and d'n'b as "breakbeat jazz".

― Tal Berkowitz - Vaccine advocate (DJP), Thursday, 8 September 2011 15:25 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's an interesting way of putting it. i agree with the former, but i have trouble parsing the latter.

That was his background

dog latin, have you listened to the way Jenkinson plays bass, or more to the point have you listened to very many jazz bassists play solos?

Also, do you actually understand what "____ is the new jazz" actually means? I mean, beyond there being strong jazz elements in the music being cut up, a lot of what people were reacting to was a live band doing these fast cut-up, sample-heavy pieces with a good amount of improvisation in it. Technically, it wasn't that far removed from the process behind hard bop.

lol @ this list

voted Screamadelica I am a Bird Now

― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 7 September 2011 23:29 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dan, yeah i'm very familiar with squarepusher, but he's his own thing really an arguably doesn't fit the jazz or the drum'n'bass hole.

yeah, i understand the jazz tag being applied to reprazent, fine, yes it's jazzy - no arguments behind that, they're a live band with a strong jazz vibe. still object (or at least objected at the time) to people desperately trying to intellectualise or sanitise drum'n'bass, which is really just an offshoot of rave music, by calling it "the new jazz" which, frankly, it isn't and never was.

There was a whole dnb subgenre called jazzstep, and many of those guys themselves were talking about the connection between their music and jazz. So it's not like the "jazz" label was something outsiders wanted to stamp to the music.

squarepusher is pretty firmly rooted in jazz imo, harmonically esp, also oop north you can see him play with the sheffield/leeds free jazz scene playing bass exactly like he does w/ squarepusher

also don't remember v much improvisation, or fast cut up stuff w roni/reprazent?

technically, it's a million miles from hard bop! jeez

And there were also people like Cleveland Watkiss who actually were jazz musicians before coming to dnb.

(x-post)

and it's not like a lot of guys who self-identified as jazz musicians weren't involved in the scene, this notion that hardcore junglists decided to apply a thin veneer of stand-up bass to their existing stuff c. 1996 doesn't describe how it went down at all, from where i was listening

like the head for a roni size track would read

GO
STOP
BASS BREAK
GO AGAIN
Look stonedeyed at each other
Roni Nods, Dribbles
Song Ends

compositional process as well as perfomance tho. i mean anything being "the new anything" is always tinged with the ridic but trying to keep genres in their nice separate tupperware boxes is faintly ridic too

Keeping CDs in a nice separate tupperware box is also ridic...

still object (or at least objected at the time) to people desperately trying to intellectualise or sanitise drum'n'bass, which is really just an offshoot of rave music, by calling it "the new jazz" which, frankly, it isn't and never was.

The more "complex" forms of jazz were also offshoots of a once-popular, populist form of dance music, so perhaps the comparison is not that far-fetched?

not far fetched just pointless

dnb is closer to hiphop than anything else imo

Thriller is still a great album even if you don't approve of Micheal Jackson's caviar smuggling ring.

Is this a euphemism for und3rag3 s3x or have I missed some important Jacko news?

it's a reference to the previous few posts.

I don't like "intellectualise" and "sanitise" being used as interchangeables, nor the subliminal racism in operation when either is applied to black music (subtext: "they're dumb illiterate blacks ergo their music is not worth explaining or analysing"). Anyway DJP sums up things nicely in his post above (apropos hard bop).

Also d&b wasn't "just an offshoot of rave music," its roots go back (at least in part) to the dubplates of the seventies and the reggae sound systems of the mid-seventies onward.

xp Depends entirely on the producer. To Spring Heel Jack or Squarepusher d&b was another way of making jazz. To DJ Hype or Aphrodite it was high-speed hip hop. To others it was a different take on dancehall or Detroit techno or ambient. Even at the time nobody could agree on what it was or should be - some, like Goldie, were just better at shaping and presenting a narrative.

If any of them could have predicted Pendulum they would have quit their squabbling and bonded together against a common foe.

I don't like "intellectualise" and "sanitise" being used as interchangeables, nor the subliminal racism in operation when either is applied to black music

Hold your horses, this is getting way way too semantic and I object to this line of discourse very strongly, Marcello. Disregarding the fact that jazz is also black music, race has fuck all to do with this. The argument is the same as anyone who ever bemoaned punk rock being watered down or castrated or commercialised in the early '80s* - it goes no deeper than this. There've been some excellent points made here by all counts and I appreciate I probably just don't "get" what Roni Size and pals were doing in their sophisticating of drum'n'bass (especially when, as a teenager, I was more interested in visceral, high-impact dance music)- but my misgivings were largely aesthetic and based on personal preferences.

*also not trying to make an argument against whatever happened to punk in the '80s - let's not go down that root or i'll be apologising for things i haven't actually said all day

Don't worry, Marcello loves accusing people of subliminal racism. It's one of his things.

going through the Spotify playlist now, initial thoughts:

Primal Scream - I don't hate this as much as I used to, but I still don't like it
Portishead - duh amazing
Pulp - this is terrible until "Common People", at which point it becomes great for a few songs in a row before falling off again
Roni Size - This is such a mood album; when I'm up for it, it's fantastic, but when I'm not it's a painful slog. Today was a painful slog day.
Gomez - made it through two songs before realizing life is too precious for this
Talvin Singh - I assume this eventually gets to some sort of point? Because right now it's just aimless, vaguely pleasant noodling.

Nothing wrong with aimless, vaguely pleasant noodling.

not intrinsically, no

it's not very compelling to listen to, tho

I think also the aforementioned missing first track may be putting up an artificial barrier, as my first exposure to the album is 11+ minutes of "I had a thought, I'm going to play around with it for 64 measures with minimal variation! Okay time for strings."

Dummy.

the talvin singh album sounded best when i happened upon it while it was playing in someone else's house/car. did you know he played tablas on some remixes of Kiss Them For Me?

For me it was a toss-up between the Elbow album and Suede's debut. I chose Suede's debut. Some really awful albums in there though, in my opinion.

how is this anything but portishead?

Ms Dynamite is pleasant but boring

http://sickmouthy.com/2011/09/08/the-best-mercury-music-prize-winner-ever/

I suspect I shouldn't be enjoying this Franz Ferdinand album as much as I am, but fuck it, this is great

dog latin the issue here is that as is commonly the case you're parroting received wisdom which is totally off the mark in respect of what was actually happening. You don't have to understand "the scene" to have an opinion on the music but if you're going to base your criticisms around such issues then really you should try. Otherwise the "I don't actually follow the music and this is just my vague perception" caveat should be enough to make you stop typing further.

Like, yes, the beats on New Forms were largely less complex than Size/Reprazent had done before, but they were still mostly more complex than the majority of d&b beats by 1997, this was something happening scene-wide and if anything Size/Reprazent were fighting a rear-guard action on tunes like "Share The Fall". Go back 2 years previous and Size and Die in particular were doing some of the most layered, dense, trippy beats in jungle (see tunes like "11.55"). But those jazz samples had always been there from the beginning, and were really barely different to what Dillinja was doing in 1994 - 1996. The idea that they tailored their sound to cultivate crossover success is just wrong, the only adjustments they made to their sound were to stay consistent with where dancefloors were going. The crossover elements begin and end with the guest vocalists.

For a long time I thought it a shame that they released their big double cd epic in 1997 and not 1995, because the latter would have been a very different album. But the specific appeal of New Forms is its stripped back repetition, the way that tunes like "Change My Life" and "Hot Stuff" and "Down" and "Ballet Dance" interweave just a few carefully chosen elements to create this hypnotic space where even the mildest adjustment has massive effects - like the way the drums switch up about a third of the way through "Change My Life" and then the bass switches up at the two thirds mark. As a musical dynamic the effect is closer to Neu! than it is to most jazz. Or, closer to home, deep house. A tune like "Down" has that sparkly, spangly quality I associate with the best deep house like Dubtribe Soundsystem's "Do It Now".

And anyway the more you listen to the drums the more you realise they're actually full of surprises, all these micro-variations and hesitations and riffs on the central groove that are totally involving the way that interesting house percussion is involving.

Eventully d&b smoothed out even these and became mostly a changeless same, but it's horrendously simplistic to dismiss every point on a musical trajectory on the basis of its endpoint. If anything its the brevity of this particularly point - a moment when d&b was exploring the inherent possibilities in repetition but had not yet installed absolute repetition as orthodoxy - that makes it worth treasuring.

I voted for Antony. It's not necessarily my favourite on the list but I never really followed the Mercury's pre 97 and while I consider Screamadlica, Dummy and Different Class to be some of the most seminal British albums of the 90's I often forget they won the award in the first place. I vividly remember the 'Who the fuck?' shit storm that accompanied Antony's win fondly as well. I remember casual listening friends to be outraged at it. It really weirded some folks out.

I'm still sore about Wild Beasts missing out in 2010 and not even making the shortlist this year though.

I also think that the Polaris has been much stronger than the Mercury's in terms of winners and candidates over the last few years.

Cosign on that last sentence.

wow I don't know if I can put up with an entire Antony album

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"

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
5 minutes ago via web

Never before have I seen so much irrelevence in one tweet.

would love to hear that tbh

He later had a discussion about Avatar and vuvuzelas with Hull City manager Phil Brown.

See, i have no idea if you're joking about that or not