A former rough sleeper who was discovered by two French record producers busking on the Paris Metro is one of twelve nominees competing for one of the UK’s most prestigious music prizes.
Benjamin Clementine, whose arresting and soulful intensity has been compared to Nina Simone, is one of 12 solo artists and bands shortlisted for the 2015 Mercury Prize albums of the year awards.
Born in Edmonton, north London, the youngest of five children, Clementine left school at 16 and was effectively homeless in Camden before deciding to move to Paris. He slept rough at the Place de Clichy metro station and later a rat-infested hostel, making what money he could busking.
He made his memorable TV debut on Jools Holland’s Later, barefoot at his grand piano, and released his album At Least For Now in March. Mercury judges praised it as “dramatic, intimate and pulsatingly original”.
Clementine’s album is one of seven debuts on a list that also includes Florence + the Machine, Róisín Murphy, former Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes, and Aphex Twin with, under that alias, his first album for 13 years.
The pop music academic Simon Frith, who has chaired the prize since it began in 1992, said it was a list that celebrated artists from every stage of their careers who were hard to categorise.
“Genres seem to be becoming more and more problematic,” he said. “In a way you could say that electronic music is just part of what everybody does.
“There is also still this strong sense of do-it-yourself in British music ... the astonishing way in which everybody seems confident they can do what they want to do regardless of how they have been educated or what the industry tells them to do or whatever. They all have a clear sense of what they want to say and a determination to say it.”
One album with literal DIY spirit is C Duncan, a classically trained composer and musician and former student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, shortlisted for Architect which was released by the Brighton-based independent label FatCat Records in July.
Christopher Duncan self-recorded his album in his Glasgow bedroom and it was hailed by Mercury judges as “wide-eyed, spacious and hypnotic”. The Guardian called it “magical” in its 4-star review: “He seamlessly merges interweaving vocals with the sounds of pastoral English folk and lush, 4ADesque dreampop.”
Another debut album on the list is the north London guitar band Wolf Alice whose album My Love is Cool reached number 2 in the UK chart.
The shortlist was revealed on Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 show and, speaking from San Francisco, Wolf Alice’s lead singer, Ellie Rowsell, said she could not quite believe the nomination. “We are absolutely flabbergasted, if that is a word that people still use.
“I think I can speak for all four of us when I say it has been the best year of our lives, it has been amazing.”
The other debuts were the album Eska, from the Zimbabwean-born, Lewisham-raised Eska Mtungwazi; Are You Satisfied by Slaves, a loud, punky Kent-based duo called Laurie Vincent and Isaac Holman; Before We Forgot How to Dream, by SOAK, also known as Bridie Monds-Watson, an 18-year-old singer songwriter from Derry.
Another technical debut is In Colour, the first solo album of Jamie xx, who won the Mercury Prize with the rest of his band The xx in 2010. Judges called it “a joyous trip through clubland past, present and future”.
Florence + The Machine, who was shortlisted and had been favourite to win back in 2009 for her debut album, Lungs, is nominated again for her third album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.
It was praised by judges as “powerful, dramatic and exhilarating,” although the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis was less keen. “It’s an album that’s too overblown and daft for the songs to have the desired emotional impact: it’s never really intimate enough for the feelings Welch expresses to connect.”
Aphex Twin, an alias of the pioneering electronic musician Richard D James, is nominated for Syro, his sixth album and first – for Aphex Twin – in 13 years. Judges called it a “triumphant return ... compelling, playful and timeless.”
Another of the more established artists on the list is Gaz Coombes, the former Supergrass frontman, who is nominated for his second solo album, the self-produced Matador which judges called “an album of peerless songwriting – heartfelt and beautifully realised.”
Róisín Murphy is another artist who made her name as part of a band – she was one half of Moloko. She is shortlisted for her third album Hairless Toys and she told Laverne: “It was a record just for the joy of making the bloody thing.”
Ghostpoet, otherwise known as Londoner Obaro Ejimiwe, who was also a judge last year, is nominated for the second time for his album Shedding Skin; praised as “a brilliant match of voice, word and music”.
The winner, who will follow in the footsteps of artists including Young fathers, PJ Harvey and Elbow, will be announced on 20 November at a show in the Radio Theatre at BBC Broadcasting House in London.
