By: Dan Salter
The Dead Albatross Awards | website | twitter |
A few weeks ago myself and Metal Editor Sander were invited to join the judging panel for this year’s Dead Albatross Award, an alternative to the Mercury Prize that had its first run last year. To be honest we hadn’t come across them before but the depth and diversity of the shortlist piqued our interest so on the weekend I popped over to their mission control in North London and caught up with founder Paul to find out a bit more about the whys and wherefores.
(((o))): So, first of all I think tell us a bit about yourself and why you’re doing this.
Ok, I mean all my life really I’ve been obsessed with music and I think that’s got a lot more obscure over the years, although I blame John Peel a lot for that.
So, just my entire existence is not sleeping and listening to too many records. I used to play out live quite a lot and then about four years ago kind of made the decision to put that on hold a bit and concentrate on radio because, I don’t know, it’s just a greater variety of things that I could play on there and represent a lot more different genres and put things in context more and I really enjoyed the angle of being able to explain what you were listening to and the Dead Albatross thing came out of… well every single year the Mercury list would be published and I’d just be horrified at firstly some of the things they deemed worthy of coverage but secondly, and more importantly, the things that they missed – the number of oversights every year. The albums that kind of defined what was happening, like, within British music, they just weren’t given a look-in and then you look into the commercial side of it and find out that you’ve got to pay something like seven grand to even be considered for it so you’re just excluding real artists from it.
(((o))): So what do you hope to achieve with Dead Albatross?
What I’ve always liked about Mercury is the period between them announcing the shortlist and the award happening and the fact that you have a bunch of people voting and sort of spending time with the records and the extra exposure that those albums get within that period. So, we wanted to replicate that but take the rest of the bollocks away from it. So, I guess what we’re looking for is to every year give like a proper honest and fair representation of what we experience as music obsessives and, kind of, just to celebrate, well, the UK music industry on a real level.
The things that will still be worthy in 30 years or something, that…cos a lot of these things are on such limited runs – 100 copies, 200 copies, the Ela Orleans record that won last year was 300 copies. And then got re-pressed off the back of that cos it was so in demand. Then she sold out all of them as well. But yeah, it’s that thing of trying to just raise people’s profile that deserve to have their profile risen.
(((o))): See that’s really interesting, because obviously that’s almost verbatim what I just said about Echoes and Dust when you were interviewing me for the record show earlier – it’s interesting that we’ve come at that from a very similar point of view.
It’s that thing of just finding something that needs to happen and then just taking the initiative.
((o))): So how did you pick the shortlist?
We probably listened through about 400 albums that have come out of the UK over the last year and then ended up with a long-list of about 120 albums, then managed to whittle it down to about 65 that each of those 65 really deserved to be in it – there was nothing wrong with any of them, the ones that we left out, so we were trying to whittle the list down to 25.
(((o))): And was that just you personally or were there other people involved?
I was getting other people involved with suggestions of things to listen to. Next year we’re gonna have a shortlisting panel cos, yeah, I’ve come up with the final list on my own and I do feel too much responsibility for it even though it’s largely good feedback, I’ve had a couple of death threats about not including the Bass Clef album! Since the Bug album came out.. kind of, we listened to so many records because that was the middle of August that one came out. We just listened to so many other records around that time it kind of got lost and then since we published the shortlist I’ve got really hooked on it and I just feel awful about not including that, so yeah the more people we’ve got… well, kind of, we’re gonna have about five people on the shortlisting panel next year taking more of an active role in it, so… Thing is it’s still a very young venture, cos this is only the second year we’ve been doing it, so… finding our feet.
(((o))): So, the shortlist is 25 albums. That’s quite a commitment. Do you think that might put some people off or do you feel that people may not be able to give all the albums the time that they need?
That is gonna happen but more importantly there’s an album on that list for everybody, so if people come across the prize and they only hear two things out of the 25 albums but then they really fall for one of them then that’s job done, I think. Every extra person that gets to hear something is a victory.
(((o))): It is an incredibly eclectic mix of stuff – I was really quite surprised when I was listening through. There’s everything from school children to some really quite dark techno and then people with weird tempered guitars and all that sort of thing, so I guess your expectation isn’t that there are gonna be people out there that like everything?
No. No, but some people will. But again, we go back to John Peel again because it was very much you’d listen to his programme and there’d be a track that came on that you absolutely hated but you knew that the next thing, by law of averages, you probably would really like. I dunno. I’m always about trying to expand people’s musical horizons, I suppose, and just trying to push the limits of their own imposed limits.
(((o))): I mean, I thought I liked some fairly obscure stuff and then I listened through some of these things and it’s like “Wow, that’s way out there”. I mean, that’s great because it opens my horizons and challenges my preconceptions – is that kind of where you’re trying to come from with it?
Yeah. Dolly Doll An odd record indeed!
(((o))): Yes, yeah. It is…I’m not sure I made it all the way through that one, I have to say. It was just kind of like… “ok”. I was listening to it at work and I was like “No. Not the right situation for this!”
Which is the other thing: it’s about finding the right context for certain albums, isn’t it?
Burning Tyre + Ela Orleans & Echoes And Dust interview by Kamikaze on Mixcloud
(((o))): I was very intrigued to see Kate Tempest on there because obviously she’s actually nominated for the Mercury this year. Did you pick that before the Mercury nominations we announced?
Well yeah, because we had a lot of discussions beforehand, we looked at the Ladbrokes odds before the Mercury Prize came out, of what they were expecting to win and it was all down to, like, George Michael at 500 to 1 to win but Kate Tempest and FKA Twigs were quite high in the list. So, we kind of figured that that might come up, because it’s got an awful lot of coverage on, say, 6 Music for example as a station has really picked up on it but a lot of other places. So then we were discussing, do we try to exclude things because we think they might be on the Mercury list? So there were two albums that this applied to with us, that was Mike Levi – which I was convinced was going to make it into their list but didn’t – but also the Kate Tempest. I think we’re trying to paint a picture of what’s real and what’s happening in our world but Kate Tempest was very much within that as well.
(((o))): So there’s a Venn diagram of the Mercury and the Dead Albatross that just meets at that point?
Yeah, and I think that’s nice for people who are into more the music that’s covered with Mercury, that they might be really into Kate Tempest so then that provides an entry point for them and for us as well. I think; well if that’s the limit of where they got to, so let’s see what happens beyond that.
(((o))): And you don’t think it kind of undermines the credibility of what you’re doing or is it just a complimentary thing?
I think because at first we started as…well, just a giant ‘up yours’ to Mercury but we’ve just kind of dropped those sentiments – we just run concurrent to it and highjack as much publicity, and use their well-oiled marketing machine! So, I don’t know. Yeah, there were long discussions about the potential of crossover so we put our list out about an hour before Mercury did, just so we could make use of the hype and whatever.
(((o))): Excellent. Get your retaliation in first!
Yeah – cos the other side of it is there’s a long history and tradition of albums where the winning artist sees their career nosediving after they’ve won the Mercury prize, like almost a curse and like back in 2001 Damon Albarn withdrew the Gorillaz album for that reason and said it would be like having a dead albatross round your neck for the rest of your career, which is where obviously we’ve taken our name from.
Yeah, so I’d like to think if Kate Tempest wins this that we might be the saving grace of her credibility!
(((o))): So how do you pick the judges and why us?
Because we wanted people that liked the right end of metal. We had 20 people on the panel last year and that core group has kind of grown quite a lot and…I don’t know…because a lot of people, the majority of the people seem to have really broad tastes, which is how I’ve ended up getting to know them I suppose. And then we were looking around just seeing – like you might have a techno obsessive sat on the panel somewhere and everything but metal seemed under-represented so we kind of came to Echoes and Dust from that angle but then saw, obviously, such a broad range of stuff that you cover as well as a magazine.
(((o))): I’m sure Sander will be pleased to know that – he’s our metal editor so he’s the other guy that’s gonna contribute too It’s really interesting actually because obviously he’s our big metal fan but he’s been emailing me going “Have you heard this one?! This one’s really cool!” and I was like “Really? This is a man with a noseharp!”. So…yeah, it’s been quite interesting to see what’s rung his bell that’s different to what personally has appealed to me. So how did you arrive at the Bong and Cosmic Dead particularly? Because obviously those are interesting to us.
Well the Bong album, I think it’s spectacular.
(((o))): Well yeah, I mean I can’t disagree with either of them, you know, it’s just interesting out of what, for us has been an amazing year for kind of doom and psychedelic music so those two albums are definitely up the top of our list but there’s other stuff that we think “Ok, if we were doing it we’d probably have included…”
Yeah, cos it was kind of a two-way tie between the Sly and the Family Drone album and Bong but then we kind of went with Bong, both of them kind of got a location angle to them as well so we’re trying to represent every corner of the country, which is quite difficult. Like a lot of the list are London-based artists this year, which, I mean, we’ve weighed up a lot of stuff with the shortlisting process but to have someone from the North East, they kind of won from that side and Cosmic Dead as well. There’s not been a lot of good Scottish music this year, I’ve got to say. Whereas last year the shortlist had three Scottish artists and there was a Scottish one-two with Ela Orleans and Divorce but then this year I think maybe the emphasis of Scotland has gone more to the referendum and plus they’re just incredible records.
And wanting to give coverage to albums that don’t necessarily conform to the album format – they’re quite happy to… let’s say the Bong album, two tracks in the region of about 37 minutes. Not pandering to radio play. A lot of people have come back and gone “I’m not sure about that Bong album” and you just say to them “Well just think of it as a punk track that’s just been time-stretched”.
(((o))): Going back to the Mercurys just for a second: my impression of them is that they are the last thrashings of a dying industry in some ways. Would you agree with that?
Well if you look at the origins of Mercury – I think it was ’93 it started as an immediate reaction to what was happening with the Brit awards, so I guess, I don’t know. It’s never provided a real alternative but there are always a couple of interesting picks on there, something like the Roni Size album for instance.
(((o))): No. I mean, something we talk about on Echoes and Dust a lot is the kind of what we view as much more the ‘new model industry’, of bands who are just trying to be self-sustaining and that sort of thing and obviously a lot of the stuff that you’re covering here is deeply uncommercial. What’s your view on that? How’s the industry changed?
I think, well the Internet has obviously played an enormous part in this but I think the smaller artists, whereas before – again, back to Peel: he was the only place before the Internet came along, the only place you could hear the majority of the more leftfield end of everything. I’m not a fan of the word ‘industry’ but if you’re looking at the music that people are able to consume now, like kids now growing up with, well everything’s so accessible and yeah I think it’s changing how people can listen to things and everyone’s got a much broader idea of what they might be open to, I think.
(((o))): People are more inclined to just kind of sample and dip in and out of different bits and pieces just because, like you say, it’s all there, you don’t have to hunt for it. But I do find that it perhaps means that it’s kind of harder to sift out the really good stuff, there’s a lot of noise.
From the radio work that I do, I get sent a lot of demos and promos and I ignore every single one of them and just continue with my own path of “I’m covering things as I find them”. I don’t like being told to listen to. I’m probably missing a lot of good music that way, but that’s my path.
(((o))): Yeah. So, this is only the second year, do you see this going on for a while?
Yeah, I mean we’ve grown just a ridiculous amount from last year. Last year it was only as a reaction to seeing the 2013 Mercury shortlist that I first started thinking about making a radio show of the things that I would’ve shortlisted but that got out of control and ended up getting a lot of people involved!
So we didn’t have a lot of time to plan it or anything but just seeing the difference that we’ve managed to make to certain artists over the last year – Ela Orleans particularly.
(((o))): That was something I was going to ask, actually, has there been an impact on the people that have taken part and won?
The way that Ela Orleans speaks about it, it’s just changed her life completely, kind of validated what she’s doing initially and the sorts of job offers she’s getting now is amazing. So seeing that first-hand, that you’re actually making a difference to the artist, that gives you a real push to continue. But what we see with the difference that you can make with the winner…we don’t really want it all to be about the winner and that’s what I’m saying about having the shortlisting period where we can try and give extra exposure to all of the artists involved.
(((o))): It’s almost a shame there has to be a winner but it is a competition at the end of the day and you kind of have to pick somebody. It’s almost that cliché of “They all deserve it in some way”.
Everyone’s a winner.
(((o))): So when does the winner get announced?
29th October, same day as the Mercury prize. We’ll be going out on reelrebelsradio.com at the same time with a bit of, like an awards show fun thing. At the minute we’re collecting audio soundbites from as many of the artists as possible, just doing something a bit fun, a bit different.
(((o))): Brilliant, we’d better get our votes in! Thanks for your time & we can’t wait to find out who’s won.
The Shortlist:
A New Line (Related) – S/T [Home Assembly]
Astor – Inland [Kye]
Bong – Stoner Rock [Ritual Productions]
Dolly Dolly – Antimacassar [Exotic Pylon]
Ex-Easter Island Head – Mallet Guitars Three [Low Point]
Flamingods – Hyperborea [Shape Records]
Flava D – FlavaD.com Vol.5 [Self Release]
Good Throb – Fuck Off [Super Fi/White Denim/Sabremetric]
Ibibio Sound Machine – Ibibio Sound Machine [Soundway]
Isnaj Dui – Euplexia [Rural Colours]
Kate Tempest – Everybody Down [Big Dada]
L.B. Dub Corp – Unknown Origin [Ostgut Ton]
Matt Elliott – Only Myocardial Infarction Can Break Your Heart [Ici D’ailleurs]
Mica Levi – Under The Skin Soundtrack [Milan/Rough Trade]
Millie & Andrea – Drop The Vowels [Modern Love]
Prescott – One Did [Slowfoot Records]
Shifted – Under A Single Banner [Bed Of Nails]
Shopping – Consumer Complaints [MÏLK]
Stefan Jaworzyn – Principles Of Inertia [Trensmat]
Sub Luna City – City Rivims Mk 1 [Self Release]
The Cosmic Dead – Easterfaust [Paradigms recordings ]
The Mistys – Redemption Forest [Other ideas]
The Soundcarriers – Entropicalia [Ghost Box]
V/A : Classroom Projects – Various Artists [Trunk Records]
Zed Bias – Boss [Swamp 81]
