Tag Archives: Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize

Mercury revs up

Bradford Beat has been gearing up for the announcement of this year’s Mercury Prize winner by highlighting three of the shortlisted albums – by Soak, Ghostpoet and Wolf Alice.

Here’s the full list of what we played on our latest show – which will be repeated from 8pm to 9pm on Thursday 19 November:

Terrorvision – American TV
Editors – Ocean of Night
The Delvaux – Trouble Buried Deep
Soak – Reckless Behaviour
Soak – Blud
Wolf Alice – Your Loves Whore
Wolf Alice – You’re A Germ
Ghostpoet – Off Peak Dreams
Ghostpoet – X Marks The Spot
Forward Russia – 9
Daughter – Doing The Right Thing
Too Many Chiefs – Devil Bird
Soak – Be A Nobody

You can listen again here

Mercury Rising

This week’s Bradford Beat took a closer look at the newly-announced shortlist for the 2013 Mercury Prize – as well as playing music from as far afield as Wakefield, Oregon and Barcelona.

Here’s the full track listing for the show:

Los Stompers – Watch You Watch You
Whiter Than – Note To Self
Foals – Late Night
Fossil Collective – Let It Go
Larry and his Flask – The Battle For Clear Sight
The Seven Inches – Cashback
Franz Ferdinand – Evil Eye
The Blueskins – Ellie Meadows
Nadine Shah – Runaway
Jed’s Blues Band – Dirty Water
Villagers – The Bell
Hobbes Fan Club – Your Doubting Heart
Billy Bragg – Ingrid Bergman
Chutzpah – Eyes
The 1975 – Talk!

You can listen again to the show by clicking here

Podcast Special – Selection Box v Speech Debelle

Yon editor seems to have got all a-giddy and presented this as some kind of huge new exciting podcast brew ha ha type behaviour. It seems a bit over excited, considering that I announced that this interview would appear on these pages a few weeks ago, but if someone wants to trump for my corner, who I am to complain? So long as it doesn’t smell.

Speaking of corners, it also seems that young Adam – for he is the aforementioned editor in question – has titled this interview as either some sort of pugilist pagga betwixt myself and my subject. Either that or that we’re indulging in one of those terpsichorean mash-ups, which is not the case either. It’s just two people having a chinwag, one of them (me) duty-bound to be far nosier than the other.

So, here’s the obligatory photo for visual stimulus, and then you can listen to the interview, by jiminy.

The wind was a South Easterly that day

The wind was a South Easterly that day

[podcast]https://www.bcbradio.co.uk/musicblog/wp-content/uploads/SinglesClub_03.mp3[/podcast]

Speech Debelle & The Mercury Music Prize

I had intended to knock something up about the Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize before I went on holiday, and therefore also before this year’s winner was announced.

You only have my word for it, therefore, that Speech Debelle was my tip for the prize. In fact, I think I have now correctly guessed the Mercury Prize winner for the past four years. Sadly, I’ve never even set foot inside a bookmaker’s, so my Nostradamusesque capabilities in this matter have sadly not led to a bulging wallet.

It’s a strange old beast, the Mercury. When Antony & The Johnsons won the prize in 2005 for the modern masterpiece I Am A Bird Now, the eponymous lead singer Antony Hegarty claimed that the award was “kind of like a crazy contest between an orange and a spaceship and a potted plant and a spoon – which one do you like better?” I suspect it this nonsensical eclecticism which determines that I should always be quite so interested in the result. Continue reading →