The Warning (Hot Chip album)
The Warning is the second full-length release by British band Hot Chip. The album was released in the UK on 22 May 2006 by EMI Records and in the United States on 3 June 2006 by Astralwerks. Notable tracks include the UK singles, "Over and Over" and "Boy from School", as well as " Breakdown", featured and remixed on the DFA Records compilation album The DFA Remixes – Chapter One; the album was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize. The Warning explores the theme of contradiction as well as "slower and darker aspects of electronic music" with the use of "strange violence" in songs; this technique is best depicted in the song, "The Warning". The chorus continues the idea with a "patent mismatch of violence and melancholy". A number of reviews commented on the stylistic and lyrical changes between Hot Chip's first album Coming on Strong and The Warning. Coming on Strong was described as a "successful but safe entrée to the British electro-soul outfit" and although "graceful, delicate melodies of the debut" had been abandoned, they were replaced for "songs with more wallop".
Hot Chip's music changed from the "quirky electro-pop" of Coming on Strong to create an album, "much more focused and pop friendly", "a step away from Prince and a step towards LCD Soundsystem". The production of The Warning was handled by vocalists Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, who produced and recorded the album in the band's Putney home. NME commented. Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy of DFA Records were involved in the production of one song. Though the song "worked out well as a record", Taylor stated it wasn't "an enjoyable experience in terms of feeling involved". Taylor said that he and Goddard work best as a duo, the success of which he attributes to the years they have been acquainted. An idea involving all five members joining together to write songs was rejected because Taylor "didn't think it would come up with anything interesting." Although the album isn't one of all five members and Goddard approached the album with "the spirit of the live show". In an interview with Jim Carroll from The Irish Times, Taylor stated that Hot Chip had two different strands.
Taylor said. The recording of the album took place in Goddard's bedroom, where Goddard had "an old Dell desktop that bought maybe four or five years ago" running Steinberg Cubase; the album was recorded using live instruments, including tambourines and bongos, but multiple vintage synths were used in the creation of The Warning such as a Roland SH-101, a Teisco 60F and a Casiotone MT-70. Goddard said the majority of the album was recorded with the Casiotone MT-70 due to its "soft, simple sound" that "fits with the sound that try to create" and works well with Taylor's voice. Goddard stated a preference for using a mix of analog and computer sounds rather than a concentration of Virtual Studio Technology instruments. However, one VST instrument was used, the Arturia Moog Modular, because Goddard felt it created vintage sounds that weren't "too shiny or new-sounding"; the musical influences of Taylor and Goddard, such as R. Kelly, krautrock, Kraftwerk and Madlib, were brought together on The Warning.
Taylor stated that he wanted the variety of musical interests to sound as if they had "all been mixed together in a good way" rather than "bolted together crudely", because of his belief that music shouldn't sound like "just a load of instruments". "No Fit State" gathers large influence from "Svetlana" by the group Xex. According to Nielsen SoundScan data reported by Billboard, The Warning sold 49,000 copies in the United States and peaked on the UK Album Chart at number 34 and number 13 on Billboard Top Electronic Albums."Boy from School" was the first single released from The Warning, peaking at position number 40 on the UK chart. The second single released, "Over and Over", entered the UK chart twice, beginning with the 27 February 2006 release that reached position number 32, it re-entered the UK chart on 9 October 2006, peaking at position number 27 in the UK Singles Top 75, reached position number 44 in the Ireland Singles Top 50. Hot Chip embarked upon a tour of America in March 2006 to promote The Warning.
Felix Martin wasn't able to participate due to severe illness, so fellow band members "had to figure out how to do his parts whilst own" and enlisted the help of LCD Soundsystem drummer, Pat Mahoney. Critical reception to The Warning was favourable, with the album receiving a score of 79 out of 100 by review aggregate website Metacritic based on 27 reviews. AllMusic said that "Over and Over" had "DFA signature production" and described the chorus as sounding "hauntingly similar to something Paul McCartney would write had he been paying attention to the music of the youth in his own backyard." The production of the title track, "The Warning", was likened to outtakes by The Postal Service and it was said that it "wouldn't out of place on I Am Robot and Proud's last few records". Pitchfork described the song as one of the centrepieces on the album and that "like a lot of the band's best songs, it splits into three and four parts, veering into bridges where there should be choruses, verses where there should codas, dirges where there should be melodies".
Prefix magazine's review dis
Disco
Disco is a music genre and subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. The music, the fashion, many song lyrics and other cultural phenomena associated with disco were focused on having a good time on the dance floor of a discotheque to the loud sounds of records being played by a DJ enhanced by coloured lighting effects. Disco started as a mixture of music from venues popular with African Americans and Latino Americans, Italian Americans, LGBT people, psychedelic hippies in Philadelphia and New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco can be seen as a reaction to both the dominance of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. Several dance styles were developed during the period of disco's popularity in the United States, including the Bump and the Hustle; the disco sound is typified by "four-on-the-floor" beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, electric piano and electric rhythm guitars.
Lead guitar features less in disco than in rock. Well-known disco artists include Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, the Bee Gees, Chic, KC and the Sunshine Band, Thelma Houston and the Village People. While performers and singers garnered public attention, record producers working behind the scenes played an important role in developing the genre. Films such as Saturday Night Fever and Thank God It's Friday contributed to disco's mainstream popularity. By the late 1970s, most major U. S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, DJs would mix dance records at clubs such as Studio 54 in New York City, a venue popular among celebrities. Discothèque-goers wore expensive and sexy fashions. There was a thriving drug subculture in the disco scene for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine and Quaaludes, the latter being so common in disco subculture that they were nicknamed "disco biscuits". Disco clubs were associated with promiscuity as a reflection of the sexual revolution of this era in popular history.
Disco was the last popular music movement driven by the baby boom generation. It began to decline in the United States during 1979-80, by 1982 it had lost nearly all popularity there. Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco protest held in Chicago on July 12, 1979, remains the most well-known of several "backlash" incidents across the country that symbolized disco's declining fortune. Disco was a key influence in the development of electronic dance house music, it has had several revivals, such as Madonna's successful 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor, again in the 2010s, entering the pop charts in the US and the UK. The term "disco" is shorthand for the word discothèque, a French word for "library of phonograph records" derived from "bibliothèque"; the word "discothèque" was current in the same meaning in English in the 1950s."Discothèque" became in use in French as a term for a type of nightclubs in Paris after these had resorted to playing records during the Nazi occupation in the early 1940s.
Some clubs used it as their proper name. In 1960 it was used to describe a Parisian nightclub in an English magazine. In the summer of 1964 a short sleeveless dress called "discotheque dress" was popular in the United States for a short time; the earliest known use for the abbreviated form "disco" described this dress and has been found in the Salt Lake Tribune of 12 July 1964, but Playboy magazine used it soon after to describe Los Angeles nightclubs in September of the same year. Vince Aletti was one of the first to describe disco as a music genre, he wrote the feature article "Discoteque Rock Paaaaarty" that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in September 1973. The music layered soaring, often-reverberated vocals doubled by horns, over a background "pad" of electric pianos and "chicken-scratch" rhythm guitars played on an electric guitar. "The'chicken scratch' sound is achieved by pressing the strings against the fretboard and quickly releasing them just enough to get a muted scratching while strumming close to the bridge."
Other backing keyboard instruments include the piano, electric organ, string synth, electromechanical keyboards such as the Fender Rhodes electric piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, Hohner Clavinet. Synthesizers are fairly common in disco in the late 1970s; the rhythm is laid down by prominent, syncopated basslines played on the bass guitar and by drummers using a drum kit, African/Latin percussion, electronic drums such as Simmons and Roland drum modules. The sound was enriched with solo lines and harmony parts played by a variety of orchestral instruments, such as harp, viola, trumpet, trombone, flugelhorn, French horn, English horn, flute, piccolo and synth strings, string section or a full string orchestra. Most disco songs have a steady four-on-the-floor beat, a quaver or semi-quaver hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, a heavy, syncopated bass line. Other Latin rhythms such as the rhumba, the samba and the cha-cha-cha are found in disco recordings, Latin polyrhythms, such as a rhumba beat layered over a merengue, are commonplace.
The quaver pattern is supported by other instruments such as the rhythm guitar and may be implied rather than explicitly present. Songs use syncopation, the accenting of unexpected beats. In general, the d
Music video
A music video is a short film that integrates a song with imagery, is produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. There are cases where songs are used in tie-in marketing campaigns that allow them to become more than just a song. Tie-ins and merchandising can be used for food or other products. Although the origins of the music video date back to musical short films that first appeared in the 1920s, they again came into prominence in the 1980s when the channel MTV based their format around the medium. Prior to the 1980s, these kinds of videos were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional film", "promotional clip", "promotional video", "song video", "song clip" or "film clip". Music videos use a wide range of styles and contemporary video-making techniques, including animation, live action and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film.
Some music videos combine different styles with the music, such as animation and live action. Combining these styles and techniques has become more popular because of the variety for the audience. Many music videos interpret images and scenes from the song's lyrics, while others take a more thematic approach. Other music videos may not have any concept, being a filmed version of the song's live concert performance. In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child". Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances; this would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video. In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts featured many bands and dancers. Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", similar to a modern karaoke machine.
Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney, such as the Silly Symphonies shorts and Fantasia, which featured several interpretations of classical pieces, were built around music; the Warner Bros. cartoons today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Bros. musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were distributed to theaters. Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. Numerous other musicians appeared in short musical subjects during this period. Soundies and released from 1940 to 1947, were musical films that included short dance sequences, similar to music videos. In the mid-1940s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film, Lookout Sister.
These films were, according to music historian Donald Clarke, the "ancestors" of music video. Musical films were another important precursor to music video, several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl", modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark "Thriller" and the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad", influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story. According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disc jockey–singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959. In his autobiography, Tony Bennett claims to have created "...the first music video" when he was filmed walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London in 1956, with the resulting clip being set to his recording of the song "Stranger in Paradise".
The clip was sent to UK and US television stations and aired on shows including Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The oldest example of a promotional music video with similarities to more abstract, modern videos seems to be the Czech "Dáme si do bytu" created in 1958 and directed by Ladislav Rychman. In the late 1950s the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc, the Belgian Jacques Brel to accompany their songs, its use spread to other countries, similar machines such as the Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA were patented. In 1961, for the Canadian show Singalong Jubilee, Manny Pittson began pre-recording the music audio, went on-location and taped various visuals with the musicians lip-synching edited the audio and video together. Most music numbers were taped in-studio on stage, the location shoot "videos" were to add variety. In 1964, Kenneth Anger's experimental short film, Scorpio Rising used popular songs instead of dialog.
In 1964, The Moody Blues producer, Alex Murray, wanted to promote his version of "Go Now". The short film clip he produced and directed to promote the single has a striking visual style that predates Queen's similar "Bohemian Rhapsody" vid
Positivus Festival
Positivus Festival is an annual, three-day summer music and culture festival held in Salacgrīva, Latvia. First held in 2007, Positivus combines a variety of genres, including indie, folk and more styles in between; the festival is organized by Positivus Music. The festival always takes place during an extended weekend- from Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning of the third week of July. Positivus Festival is the largest music and arts festival in the Baltic States that takes place every year in the middle of July; every year Positivus Festival is becoming more popular in Europe. It is a festival with international chart toppers and underground emerging talent set in an idyllic holiday location. Positivus Festival has been awarded the title "Best European Festival" and is mentioned in many shortlists as one of the top music festivals to visit in Europe. Positivus festival has a vibe of bohemian and family oriented sort which weighs over the loud party vibe more common at music festivals. Positivus attendance has been around 30000 people for the last few years.
Over the years there have been up to six live stages featuring around 60-70 artists every year on average, most notably including Pixies, Alt-J, Ellie Goulding, The Lumineers, Hot Chip, John Newman, Placebo, M83, Iggy Pop, Tom Odell, Daughter, Bastille, The Kooks, Sigur Rós, Imagine Dragons, The XX, Hurts, OK Go, Muse and many others. The festival line-up consists of a number of chart topping artists as well as new and exciting performers from all over the world, with Latvian and Estonian artists having a strong presence; the festival takes place only 12 km from the Estonian-Latvian border, therefore there is a strong attendance of Estonian visitors, musicians and marketers as well as festival personnel, rendering Positivus an unofficial yearly meeting of the two neighbour countries. Estonians call it "Estonia's biggest music festival in Latvia". Positivus is held in the Latvian coastal town of Salacgrīva; the festival offers access to meadows, the beach, as well as the local town of Salacgrīva.
The festival camping site is located on the other side of the A1 Via Baltica road, directly across from the festival venue and it is sponsored by Merrild coffee, which provides complementary coffee refills for campers during the entire festival. The camping grounds has catering services; the car parking is located within a short distance from the camping site. As of 2016 there has been a separated area for caravans and trailer houses; the festival will take place on July 26–27, 2019. The festival took place on July 20–22, 2018; the festival took place on July 14–16, 2017. The festival took place on July 15–17, 2016; the event took place on July 17–19, 2015. The event took place on July 18–20, 2014. In 2013 for the first time the festival will last for three days, taking place on July 19–21, 2013; the event took place on 20 and 21 July 2012. The event took place on 15 and 16 July 2011; the festival was held on 16 and 17 July 2010. The festival was held on 17 and 18 July 2009; the festival was held from 18 to 19 July 2008.
It was attended by 18,000 people. AB Stage – where all 4 headliners as well as others performed TELE2 Stage – where the majority of the bands performed Shark dance tent – was open during the night Mamma Daba Kušš Tuss tent – a minor stage featuring musical and theatrical performances It was the first PositivusAB festival; the festival was held from 27 to 28 July 2007. Official homepage MySpace.com
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United States and United Kingdom in the 1970s. Used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was used interchangeably with alternative rock; as grunge and punk revival bands in the US and Britpop bands in the UK broke into the mainstream in the 1990s, it came to be used to identify those acts that retained an outsider and underground perspective. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term. Sometimes used interchangeably with "guitar pop rock", in the mid-1980s, the term "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels; some prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. During the 1990s, grunge bands broke into the mainstream, the term "alternative" lost its original counter-cultural meaning.
The term "indie rock" became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s, indie rock developed several subgenres and related styles, including lo-fi, noise pop, slowcore, post-rock, math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success. In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped-down, back-to-basics version of guitar rock emerged into the mainstream; the commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives and The Vines. Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s. By the end of the decade, the proliferation of indie bands was being referred to as "indie landfill"; the term indie rock, which comes from "independent," describes the small and low-budget labels on which it is released and the do-it-yourself attitude of the bands and artists involved. Although distribution deals are struck with major corporate companies, these labels and the bands they host have attempted to retain their autonomy, leaving them free to explore sounds and subjects of limited appeal to large, mainstream audiences.
The influences and styles of the artists have been diverse, including punk, post-punk and country. The terms "alternative rock" and "indie rock" were used interchangeably in the 1980s, but after many alternative bands followed Nirvana into the mainstream in the early 1990s, "indie rock" began to be used to describe those bands, working in a variety of styles, that did not pursue or achieve commercial success. Aesthetically speaking, indie rock is characterized as having a careful balance of pop accessibility with noise, experimentation with pop music formulae, sensitive lyrics masked by ironic posturing, a concern with "authenticity," and the depiction of a simple guy or girl. Allmusic identifies indie rock as including a number of "varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes". Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie rock movement encompassed a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge-influenced bands, through do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement, to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco.
In fact, there is an everlasting list of subgenres of indie rock. Many countries have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country, but unknown elsewhere. However, there are still indie bands that start off locally, but attract an international audience. Indie rock is noted for having a high proportion of female artists compared with preceding rock genres, a tendency exemplified by the development of the feminist-informed Riot Grrrl music of acts like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, 7 Year Bitch, Team Dresch and Huggy Bear. However, Cortney Harding pointed out that this sense of equality is not reflected in the number of women running indie labels; the BBC documentary Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie pinpoints the birth of indie as the 1977 self-publication of the Spiral Scratch EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks. Although Buzzcocks are classified as a punk band, it has been argued by the BBC and others that the publication of Spiral Scratch independently of a major label led to the coining of the name "indie".
"Indie pop" and "indie" were synonymous. In the mid-1980s, "indie" began to be used to describe the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels themselves; the indie rock scene in the US was prefigured by the college rock that dominated college radio playlists, which included key bands like R. E. M. from the US and The Smiths from the UK. These two bands rejected the dominant synthpop of the early 1980s, helped inspire guitar-based jangle pop. In the United States, the term was associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of the Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr. and The Replacements. In the United Kingdom the C86 cassette, a 1986 NME compilation featuring Primal Scream, The Pastels, The Wedding Present and other bands, was a document of the UK indie scene at the start of 1986, it gave its name to the indie pop scene that followed, a major influence on the development of the British indie scene as a whole. Major precursors of indie pop included Postcard bands Josef K and Orange Juice, significant labels included Creation and Glass.
The Jesus and Mary Chain's sound combined the Velvet
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music created by club DJs and music producers in Chicago in the early 1980s. Early house music was characterized by repetitive 4/4 beats, rhythms provided by drum machines, off-beat hi-hat cymbals, synthesized basslines. While house displayed several characteristics similar to disco music, which preceded and influenced it, as both were DJ and record producer-created dance music, house was more electronic and minimalistic; the mechanical, repetitive rhythm of house was one of its main components. Many house compositions were instrumental, with no vocals. House music developed in Chicago's underground dance club culture in the early 1980s, as DJs from the subculture began altering the pop-like disco dance tracks to give them a more mechanical beat and deeper basslines; as well, these DJs began to mix synth pop, rap and jazz into their tracks. Latin music salsa clave rhythm, became a dominating riff of house music, it was pioneered by Chicago DJs such as Steve Hurley.
It was influenced by Chicago DJ and record producer Frankie Knuckles, the Chicago acid-house electronic music group Phuture, the Tennessee DJ/producer Mr. Fingers; the genre was associated with the Black American LGBT subculture but has since spread to the mainstream. From its beginnings in the Chicago club and local radio scene, the genre spread internationally to London to American cities such as New York City and Detroit, globally. Chicago house music acts from the early to mid-1980s found success on the US dance charts on various Chicago independent record labels that were more open to sign local house music artists; these same acts experienced some success in the United Kingdom, garnering hits in that country. Due to this success, by the late 1980s, Chicago house music acts found themselves being offered major label deals. House music proved to be a commercially successful genre and a more mainstream pop-based variation grew popular. Since the early to mid-1990s, house music has been infused into mainstream pop and dance music worldwide.
In the 2010s, the genre, while keeping several of its core elements, notably the prominent kick drum on most beats, varies in style and influence, ranging from soulful and atmospheric to the more minimalistic microhouse. House music has fused with several other genres creating fusion subgenres, such as euro house, tech house, electro house and jump house. One subgenre, acid house, was based around the squelchy, deep electronic tones created by Roland's TB-303 bass synthesizer. Major acts such as Madonna, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, Martha Wash, CeCe Peniston, Robin S. Steps, Kylie Minogue, Björk, C+C Music Factory were influenced by House music in the 1990s and beyond. After enjoying significant success which started in the late 1980s, house music grew larger during the second wave of progressive house; the genre has remained popular and fused into other popular subgenres, notably ghetto house, deep house, future house and tech house. As of today, house music remains popular on radio and in clubs while retaining a foothold on the underground scenes across the globe.
House music is created by DJs, record producers, music artists with contributions from other performers on synthesizer and other electronic instruments. The structure of house music songs involves an intro, a chorus, various verse sections, a midsection and an outro; some songs do not have a verse, repeating the same cycle. The drum beat is one of the more important elements within the genre and is always provided by an electronic drum machine Roland's TR-808 or TR-909, rather than by a live drummer; the drum beats of house are "four on the floor", with bass drums played on every beat and they feature off-beat drum machine hi-hat sounds. House music is based on bass-heavy loops or basslines produced by a synthesizer and/or from samples of disco or funk songs. One subgenre, acid house, was based around the squelchy, deep electronic tones created by Roland's TB-303 bass synthesizer; the tempo of most house songs is between 115 BPM and 132 BPM. Various disco songs incorporated sounds produced with synthesizers and electronic drum machines, some compositions were electronic.
As well, the audio mixing and editing techniques earlier explored by disco, garage music and post-disco DJs, record producers, audio engineers such as Walter Gibbons, Tom Moulton, Jim Burgess, Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, M & M, others was important. These artists produced longer, more repetitive, percussive arrangements of existing disco recordings. Early house producers such as Frankie Knuckles created similar compositions from scratch, using samplers, synthesizers and drum machines; the electronic instrumentation and minimal arrangement of Charanjit Singh's Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, an album of Indian ragas performed in a disco style, anticipated the sounds of acid house music, but it is not known to have had any influence on the genre prior to the album's rediscovery in the 21st century. Rachel Cain, co-founder of influential dance label Trax Records, was involved in the burgeoning punk scene. Ca
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize called the Mercury Music Prize, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British Association of Record Dealers in 1992 as an alternative to the Brit Awards; the prize was sponsored by Mercury Communications, a brand owned by Cable & Wireless, from which the prize gets its name. It was sponsored by Technics, Nationwide Building Society and Barclaycard; the 2015 prize was sponsored by the BBC, while in 2016 it was announced that a three-year deal had been struck with Hyundai to sponsor the event. Any album released by a British or Irish artist, or by a band where over 50% of the members are British or Irish, may be submitted for consideration by their record label; the shortlist is chosen by an independent panel of musicians, music presenters, music producers, music journalists, festival organisers and other figures in the music industry in the UK and Ireland.
The prize is open to all types of music, including pop, folk, grime, jazz, blues and classical. Presentation of the awards takes place at an Awards Show in October, after the shortlist is announced at the Album of the Year Launch in September, it is observed that bands whose albums are shortlisted, or win the prize, experience a large increase in album sales for lesser known acts. Each shortlisted artist receives a specially commissioned'Albums of the Year' trophy at the Awards Show. Unlike some other music awards, the overall winner of the Mercury Prize receives a cheque; the winner receives an additional winner's trophy. To date, PJ Harvey is the only artist to have won the award on more than one occasion, she was the first female solo artist to receive the award. Alex Turner has received five nominations as a member of Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets, winning once. Thom Yorke has never won; the Mercury Prize can have a considerable effect on sales for those artists. Elbow saw a 700% sales increase of their album The Seldom Seen Kid after winning the Prize in 2008.
In their winner's speech, Elbow's frontman Guy Garvey said that winning the Mercury Prize was'Quite the best thing that has happened to us'. Sales of The xx's winning album rose by 450% the day after they won the 2010 Mercury Prize and 2013 winner James Blake saw a 2,500% sales increase on Amazon after he was announced as the winner of the 2013 Mercury Prize. 2011 winner PJ Harvey's album Let England Shake jumped from number 181 to 24 in the UK official charts the week after the 2011 Awards Show. Despite being regarded by many as prestigious, it has been suggested that having an album nominated for or winning the Mercury Prize could be a curse on a career in music. In 2001, the band Gorillaz requested that their eponymous debut album be withdrawn from the shortlist, with cartoon bassist Murdoc Niccals saying that winning the award would be "like carrying a dead albatross round your neck for eternity". All genres of music are eligible for entry, it is stated that all are treated with only the music on the album being taken into account.
Simon Frith, chair of the Mercury Prize judging panel, has said that albums are chosen because they are the "strongest" each year, rather than according to genre. However, the presence of classical and jazz recordings has been cited by some as anomalous, arguing that comparisons with the other nominees can be invidious. Classical acts to have an album nominated have included Sir John Tavener, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Gavin Bryars and Nicholas Maw. None has won, there has not been a shortlisted classical album since 2002; the Mercury Prize has a reputation for being awarded to outside chances rather than the favourites. The 1994 award winner was Elegant Slumming by the pop act M People, which some felt was a controversial decision considering the shortlist included popular albums from Britpop figureheads Paul Weller and Pulp, electronica band The Prodigy. Other music journalists critical of the awards stated that the 2005 award should not have been given to Antony and the Johnsons for their album I Am a Bird Now as, although they are British-born and therefore eligible for the Prize, the band were based in the United States.
In 2006, Isobel Campbell's collaboration with Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas, was included in the shortlist, despite Lanegan being American, as the album was eligible due to Campbell's British citizenship, while Guillemots, whose album was shortlisted in 2006, contained band members from Brazil and Canada, although the majority were from the UK. Current eligibility criteria state that all albums must be available to buy as a digital release in the UK. In September 2013, My Bloody Valentine vocalist and guitarist Kevin Shields expressed concerns about the award in an interview with The Guardian, accusing the Mercury Prize's organisers of "banning" the band's self-released album, m b v, from the shortlist nominations and addressing the nomination criteria, which he claimed branded the album "virtually illegal", it has been noted that heavy metal has been overlooked by the prize. A 2013 article by Vice on the Mercury Prize said "Metal never gets a look-in, not on the official entry information form:'The Prize is open to all types of music, including pop, folk, dance, blues, classical…'" The only metal record, nominated for the Mercury Prize is Troublegum by Therapy? in 1994.
In 2011, Mercury chair of judges S
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