MUSIC legends Teenage Fanclub and The Jesus and Mary Chain are set to go head-to-head with some of the most exciting new bands in the country, after making the longlist for the Scottish Album of the Year award.
Over 300 LPs were submitted for this year’s contest, and some of the biggest names in music failed to make the cut.
The 100 impartial nominators asked to whittle down the nominated albums to a tight 20 couldn’t find space for Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow, or Deacon Blue, or classical composer James MacMillan.
The prize’s organisers are excited about the albums that remain in the running for the £20,000 award, calling them a “celebration of Scottish talent”.
Other music veterans to have made the list include Mogwai with their album Atomic, which was the soundtrack to Mark Cousin’s film about hiroshima and the world’s relationship with nuclear.
Frightened Rabbit are on the list with their sixth album, Painting of a Panic Attack, and Fife’s King Creosote makes the longlist for the third time with Astronaut Meets Appleman.
Sacred Paws, are up for their infectiously poppy Strike A Match, an album that helped secure them a slot at the BBC’s 6 music festival when it came to Glasgow earlier this year.
The band said they were “so happy to be long listed for the SAY award”.
“There have been some incredible albums nominated over the years and we’re delighted to be in such good company this year.”
Polish-born, Glasgow based composer and sound artist Ela Orleans is through to the last 20 with Circles of Upper and Lower Hell, an album she told The Herald was based on an “apocalypse-slash-depression idea” of “no hope, misery and trauma”.
“I feel like I already enjoy the cordial support from the community of Scottish musicians, promoters, journalists and fans. The SAY Longlist nomination is the stamp of acknowledgement that I am an integral part of the country’s cultural landscape. I cannot express how significant this is for me, as an immigrant in this post-Brexit climate,” she said.
Also on the list is Rachel Newton with Here’s My Heart Come Take It. The Edinburgh traditional singer recently won the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards’ Musician of the Year.
The SAY Award Shortlist will be announced on June 15 as part of a special BBC Radio Scotland Quay Sessions, before the award ceremony itself takes place on June 28 in Paisley Town Hall, in support of the Renfrewshire town’s bid to become UK City of Culture 2021.
The SAY Award is produced by the Scottish Music Industry Association (SMIA), in partnership with Creative Scotland, Black Bottle, TicketWeb and PPL.
Robert Kilpatrick from the SMIA said this year’s longlist was an “incredibly strong, diverse and important list of contemporary Scottish records”.
“The announcement of The Longlist is one of the most exciting parts of The SAY Award campaign, and is without doubt when the award is at its most potent,” he added.
Alan Morrison, from Creative Scotland, said the albums on the list “reach out to different generations of fans but pull everyone together for one big celebration of Scottish talent”.
This is the competition’s sixth year, and over the course of that half-decade it has established itself as a vital part of the Scottish music scene, helping launch artists on to bigger things.
That is in part down to judges managing to not pick duds.
Previous winners of the SAY Award include Young Fathers, who went on to win the Mercury Prize, one of the biggest trophies in British music.
Kathryn Joseph, who won the album prize in 2015, was an unknown, working as a waitress, when the award changed everything. She recently composed the music for the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Room.
Last year’s winner Anna Meredith, a respected young classical composer, was one of the runaway hits at this year’s influential South By South West festival in Austin, Texas.
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