What is the Mercury Prize?

drat, this was supposed to be on the other list, so that's where I'm going to post it now. So just ignore this one, ok?

It's the music equivalent of the Booker Prize, which isn't very helpful admittedly. Basically it's given to one album each year and it's meant to be 'prestigious' but it isn't really, though it isn't a complete joke either (it does help sales). Everyone has a good old bitch about it each year. You have to pay to enter an album, or rather your record company does, which is dodgy I think. It's hard to think of the last time a really fantastic record won - Pulp maybe?.

GO BASEMENT JAXX GO!

Music is a part of Everything dammit! Anyway I'm not reprinting my answer. There let it stand and let the thread mutagens fall where they may.

Surely Basement Jaxx don't deserve to win until they've given Emma her cigarettes back?

Apparently when the competition first started in the 40s, there was actually mercury in the prize.............................................

DG, cigarette etiquette states that you don't have to return cigarettes given to you by total strangers, however if you keep nicking them off a mate you must buy them a whole new pack (even if you only nicked about 7 originally). I hope that clears that up.

God you have sound mates.

But Emma they are not total strangers. You bought their album and they lurk on ILE.

The new album is bad, so if you're lurking guys, then eh....you saw that. Stanton Warriors are the new Basement Jaxx as far as I'm concerned, but "Wheres your head at" still rocks. I cant remember the name of Basement Jaxx album before Rooty but it was good,

Remedy.

you win the toaster

AH, come off it Ronan. Rooty is a whole bag of fun, rocks in at under 45 minutes (nigh on unheard of for a dance album) and is pack full of great ideas on top of their standard four to the floor house stuff.

And they are nice fellas who were as perturbed as we were at not being able to get into the all night Sainsbury's.

Has anyone heard Stories from the city... fuck that dance shit, i want aching blues and four on the floor divadom !

Rooty is such a good album that a household which already had three copies saw fit to nick mine.

I love Basement Jaxx I really do, I'm going to see them when they play Dublin but I don't like Rooty, not for want of trying. Seriously Stanton Warriors-The Stanton Sessions, amazing remix of Jump and Shout, altogether a class mix album. I saw them at the Essential Festival and they were top drawer too. Incidentally anyone know anything about new Chemical Brothers stuff? God I loved that Surrender album.

But PJ made the best album this year.

Oh come on, it was last year anyway was it not? Best albums of the year are all coming out just now, New Order is class, Mercury Rev is pretty good, Spiritualized, Ryan Adams, it's going to be a great month is September.

yeh, but more importantly, new releases from Aphex, Bogdan Raczynski and Jay-Z

and 'Just One Kiss' (surely the standout track from Rooty) released as a single

anyone heard Cex - oops i did it again?

The standout track from Rooty is "Romeo" duh. And "Chasing Dreams" is gorgeous - more pop stuff boys and less rough stuff.

The tracks I heard from Peedge's album bored me.

M Rev I have not bought yet because I looked at the CD and thought "Surely this will be ghastly". Is it actually good? I mean actually actually good, not just OK. Because they were one of my favourite bands and I think for once I'd prefer not to ever hear subpar albums by favourite bands.

It's been a cracking year for good albums.

Jay Z? Lets not start a music debate actually, sorry. I lately only like Dan the Automators hiphop stuff though, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Deltron 3030, Gorillaz, and Dr Octagon. Outkast are a happy bunch aswell. Like I say Spiritualized, I am an obsessive so as far as I'm concerned, half as good as their last album makes it album of the year, same for Ryan Adams, except they can't both be album of the year.

Yeah Mercury Rev is good. Its closer to See you on the Other Side than to Deserters Songs, which goes down well with me. I hate Aphex Twin and his fiddly noodling and his die hard fans who need to inject some fun into their lives like he needs to do with his music. Sorry, rant over. Yeah loads of good albums this year, my faves so far, Fourtet, Mogwai, Whiskeytown, Jim White, Broadway Project, SFA, The Avalanches, cant think of any more but they're all great albums

Its closer to See you on the Other Side than to Deserters Songs

Really? That would be fantastic if so.

I don't want to get your hopes up, maybe other people think thats absolute rubbish, but I certainly thought it was a little bit closer, minus the weird instruments, a little more downbeat as a result. And if you dont buy it, be sure and download the first song on it the name of which escapes me, but its fantastic.

The Peedge album is surely the culmination of her career so far and there I see nowhere else for her to go. I like it but I'm not getting anything new. Which I expect is what you fear from the Rev album Tom.

And accusing the Aphex Twin of not being fun is like accusing Operation of not having a bloke with a red nose which lights up when people with DT's play it. Yes he may be pissing about half the time, but pissing about is fun.

The new Chemicals Brothers single by the way is terrible.

This thread should actually be about the Technics Mercury Music Prize, since they sponsor it.

I have a thing about Warp records, I just know some of those beardie types who only like Warp stuff and thats made me very wary. I think Aphex Twin has some great songs but he has some awful ones too, possibly because the people working round him are too afraid to say that what he's doing isn't ironic or cool, just dull. He's not fulfilled his potential as far as I'm concerned. Also I find Warp records stuff to be pretty lacking in soul, except I am partial to a bit of Autechre and Boards of Canada. I don't know about the new chems single, I've not heard it, it would be a shame if it was crap.

The best thing about this year is how many records I expected not to like or be a bit lukewarm about I've ended up really liking (Skitz, Cannibal Ox, Basement Jaxx, Radiohead, and some band from New York whose name I forget). Daft Punk is the only one which I actually had high expectations for, and I love that too.

some band from New York whose name I forget

Never pegged you for a Hopewell fan.

anyone want the first Hopewell album?

I am most surprised to see a fan of Four Tet and Mogwai dissing AFX for being fiddly and beard-stroking and not fun. Girl/Boy, Bucephalus Bouncing Ball, Windowlicker, Tamphlex, Come On You Slags etc etc = more fun than, er, a big barrel of really fun things and really crap analogies. Yesss. Also Rephlex is home of many fun things, eg Cylob's "Rewind" (original and DMX Krew remixes) and that contrary young man Bogdan Raczynski (I do hope he is ok after all the recent rumours). Have downloaded a few tracks from Drukqs and it isn't as awesome as I'd hoped but still pretty nice, I'll buy it for sure.

Some stuff on Warp does sound a bit unfinished and stuff, though. I don't really care for the Richard Devine-style abstract glitchiness, that cutting between different random mash of sounds every half- second style, and I was listening to Warp+3 Remixes yesterday and it struck me how much of the stuff on there just doesn't grab me at all. But still some of it is awesomely sweet, especially stuff by the less typical Warp people remixing oldschool Warp stuff (Plone remixing Tricky Disco, Mogwai's version of Arcadian - Link). Found the Brothomstates single a bit disappointing too, a lot of it sounds like interesting rhythm sketches for backing tracks which are just crying out for a headspinning melody over the top and maybe a breakdown into a more straightforward rocking beat, and I know from his past stuff he has a good ear for melody, chords, ravey breaks so it seems a shame that I don't hear as much of that as I'd like on there. I guess he's moved on in the years since he was known as dune of orange, but in doing so it sounds a bit more like stereotypical passionless Warp stuff to me, like the stuff I can make in Buzz in five minutes with granular synthesis but always abandon because I don't have the talent to come up with anything distinctive or interesting to put over the top. Ho hum.

(PS First sentence sounds rude and confrontational - not really intended as such, I like Four Tet and Mogwai, but I also like Aphex, and I consider him a lot more fun and a lot less precious than either of them.)

I'm sure there have been lots of records I've loved to bits this year but right now I'm hard-pushed to think of any. I can't think of anything that's really grabbed me and made me fall in love with it. Tom said somewhere that Hard To Explain was the only indie single that was catchy and fun and danceable all year and, being a sucker for catchy, fun, danceable indie of the variety that most IL* posters probably despise, I longed to list lots of stuff but couldn't think of any good indie at all. Clinic's "Monkey On Your Back" popped up on my winamp playlist last night and made me think that it's been a while since anything that I might hear at a schmindie club rocked my world as much as MOYB or Return Of Evil Bill. Mind you, I'm always about a year behind on records that make me think, "How the hell did they make something so amazing?" anyway, so, while I'll be as unable as I am every year to compile a list of records of the year this December/next January, in eighteen months' time I will be full of enthusiasm about a bunch of stuff from 2001 that I'll just have found second-hand.

OK, sorry, enough overlong posts from me today (just making up for yesterday's withdrawal symptoms), I'll leave you in peace and go to bed...

I said "Hard To Explain" was the first indie single this year to pass the Sussed test - your interpretation of that is very flattering though. I'm particularly keen on it because it provides a mix-partner for Buzzcocks' "Boredom" which I've not played since week 1 because it sticks out like a sore thumb a bit.

Rebecca, what Bogdan rumours?

I'll never agree. Aphex can take his fiddly beard strokey fans off to some island and let them masturbate on his samplers as far as I am concerned. And he can play Madonna all night and they can chuckle at how he's undermining the whole thing, the whole dance scene almost, in fact he's parodying it perpetually, because he's far better than it all of course. Mogwai live, phenomenal mind blowing experience, Aphex Live, 25 quid to laugh ironically. Cheers mate. I also find it funny that Squarepusher keeps playing industrial noise, considering he's going to end up working on a building site at this rate. I respectfully disagree therefore.

Bogdan rumours: Short version of what actually happened (I'll start with this so as not to cause alarm) is that he drank far too much vodka too fast at his Dublin gig with Aphex, his drink was allegedly spiked, when he got up on stage to play his set he was completely unable to do so and passed out, and he was presumably very ill for the rest of the night but is now apparently ok.

However, on Monday a message appeared on the Warp board saying that he'd died after the gig, and it was generally thought not to be a fake because he had looked a complete mess at the gig and because there was a message on the Rephlex site - taken down a few hours later - saying something along the lines of "We'll always remember you, Bogdan". It sounds like it wasn't a deliberate windup, someone who knew him genuinely did believe he was dead and spread the message.

So, no need for total alarm, as he is apparently alive and moderately well and stuff, but still, a pretty rough week...