SAY 2018 Long List
Last nights at King Tut’s the Scottish Album of the Year Award long list was announced. The SAY Award: “Boasting a lucrative £20,000 prize for the winner and nine runner up prizes of £1,000 each, the award celebrates, promotes and rewards the most outstanding Scottish albums released each year.”
It’s a triumph of the small-scale, richly diverse music scene, with voices like 18 year old Scottish artist Katie Buchan (Best Girl Athlete), sitting next to Kobi Onyame’s hip-hop, and Karine Polwart’s Wind Resistance sound recordings, and relative newcomers Siobhan Wilson and Neon Waltz up against a resurgent Franz Ferdinand and 2014 winners Young Fathers.
The strength of the list is its multiform eclecticism: there’s a strong presence from trad artists jostling next to the spacey dub of Golden Teacher and the sparce spiritual Happy Meals (Full Ashram Devotional Ceremony (Volumes IV – VI).
There’s some notable and controversial absences, but it’s a strong lineup. Here’s the long list:
1. Adam Holmes and The Embers – Midnight Milk
2. BABE – Kiss & Tell
3. Best Girl Athlete – Best Girl Athlete
4. Blue Rose Code – The Water of Leith
5. Catholic Action – In Memory Of
6. Chris Stout and Catriona McKay – Bare Knuckle
7. Elephant Sessions – All We Have Is Now
8. Franz Ferdinand – Always Ascending
9. Golden Teacher – No Luscious Life
10. Happy Meals (now known as Free Love) – Full Ashram Devotional Ceremony (Volumes IV – VI)
11. Karine Polwart with Pippa Murphy – A Pocket Of Wind Resistance
12. Kobi Onyame – Gold
13. Martha Ffion – Sunday Best
14. Mogwai – Every Country’s Sun
15. Neon Waltz – Strange Hymns
16. Out Lines – Conflats
17. Pronto Mama – Any Joy
18. Siobhan Wilson – There Are No Saints
19. The Spook School – Could It Be Different
20. Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar
The SAY Award Shortlist will be announced on August 23rd before the winner is announced at a ceremony in Paisley on September 6th. Follow the hashtag #SAYaotd to listen to a featured album every day.
I set up a Spotify playlist for all listed albums – https://open.spotify.com/user/souldark/playlist/4wwXejJqgBEVRseeX0raun?si=h6OpXtP7S1S_fMPgMsXLVQ
So much better than many other awards (e.g. Mercury)
Artists here doing it for themselves and producing great original music. Good to see Blue Rose Code, Karine Polwart and Stout / McKay on the list.
Would be even better if Scotland had a music TV and Radio channel to give a bit more exposure to the talent here.
Tom Morton on 60° North and Mixcloud may feature a few. Vic Galloway, Roddy Hart and others do on their respective shows.
Think BBC Alba may broadcast SAY event?