Choice Music Prize 2019 (1 Viewer)

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RTÉ Choice Music Prize

In association with IMRO and IRMA

Irish Album of the Year 2019 - Shortlist Announcement
Vicar Street, Dublin - Thursday 5th March 2020


Tickets on sale now at http://www.ticketmaster.ie

#rtechoiceprize
The shortlist for this year's RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year 2019, in association with IMRO & IRMA, was announced today on RTÉ 2FM’s Tracy Clifford Show by Jim Carroll, chairman of the judging panel. The shortlist is as follows:

Daithi - L.O.S.S. (Strange Brew)

Mick Flannery - Mick Flannery (Rosaleen Records)

Fontaines D.C. – Dogrel (Partisan Records)

Girl Band - The Talkies (Rough Trade Records)

Jafaris – Stride (DFL)

Junior Brother - Pull The Right Rope (Strange Brew)

Lankum - The Livelong Day (Rough Trade Records)

Soak - Grim Town (Rough Trade Records)

Maija Sofia - Bath Time (Trapped Animal Records)

Sorcha Richardson - First Prize Bravery (Faction Records)

As part of RTÉ’s continued commitment to promoting Irish music, RTÉ 2FM celebrates the announcement of the shortlist across its schedule throughout the day with All Irish Music All Day from 6am to midnight.
The Irish Album of the Year 2019 will be announced at the Live Event and will be broadcast live on RTÉ 2FM in a special four hour extended programme from 7-11pm, with a special RTÉ Choice Music Prize highlights programme going out on RTÉ2 television the following week.

The 15th annual RTÉ Choice Music Prize will once again celebrate the best in Irish recorded music. The Prize has become one of the music-industry highlights of the year since its inception in 2005. The Irish Album of the Year award is chosen from a shortlist of ten albums by a panel of twelve Irish music media professionals and industry experts. The full list of judges is on the RTÉ Choice Music Prize http://www.choicemusicprize.ie

RAAP and Culture Ireland are also official project partners of the RTE Choice Music Prize.

Culture Ireland will fund the attendance of influential overseas Industry executives to attend the RTE Choice Music Prize Live Event and RTÉ Choice Music Prize “Conversations” will return and take place during the day on the 5th.

Tickets for the Choice Music Prize live event are on sale now from all Ticketmaster outlets and from http://www.ticketmaster.ie priced €28.00 including booking fee.​

#rtechoiceprize​

ENDS
 
Or just give it Fontaines and save everyone's time. Save money on hat too.
 
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Anyone got the paywall?


There’s something amiss with the Irish music industry when the Choice Music Prize — the award for the year’s best Irish album — goes to a band that no longer exists. O Emperor disbanded shortly before winning the prize last year, because they couldn’t make being in a band work financially. It was odd to watch their victory being celebrated in a room full of representatives of an industry unable to offer the support they needed.

On Thursday, the managers, bookers and producers of the Irish music industry will gather in Vicar Street for the ceremony. Discussion will centre on what a great place Irish music is in.

It’s true — 2019 was exceptional — but there’s still a disconnect between the mechanisms of the industry and the musicians working within it. Privately, artists speak of poor pay, little support and few opportunities to earn.


The Choice Music Prize is a good indicator of the effects a broken model is having on our best artists. More than a quarter of the acts shortlisted between 2005 and 2017 have not made a new album since. Many will say they couldn’t make the maths work.
Financial reasons are no doubt why 45% of all nominees have been solo acts. This year, seven of the 10 nominees fall into that bracket, with Daithí among those who have said they couldn’t remain full-time musicians if they had to split revenues.

Artists will point to a need for pay parity at festivals, more support from government, and incentives to develop tour infrastructure. To say nothing is being done would be unfair, but there is little joined-up thinking outside the narrow focus of some industry bodies.

The real choice some of the nominees may face is whether they can continue a career in music.

Daithí
L.O.S.S.

Unlikely to trouble the business end of judges’ deliberations, this second album from Daithí Ó Drónaí was a surprise inclusion on this year’s shortlist. L.O.S.S. marked a step forward for the fiddle-playing dance musician, who found that his true artistic identity lay more left of field than the soulless dance-pop of his debut. Ambient and contemplative, Daithí explores the theme of the album’s title with collaborators such as Paul Noonan and the Sei. It made for mixed results, but the Clare musician’s next move will be watched with interest.
Chances ★★

Mick Flannery
Mick Flannery

The only nominated entry to reach the top of the charts, Mick Flannery’s sixth album is another thoughtful work from probably the best songwriter on the shortlist. This effort is his most cohesive record yet, across a solid career; it’s a loose concept-album based around a musician struggling to deal with fame. There’s a whiff of Jackson Maine, from A Star is Born, to the character being inhabited by Flannery, particularly on the standout track Star to Star.
Chances ★★

Melodic rock: Fontaines DC

Melodic rock: Fontaines DC
GETTY IMAGES
Fontaines DC
Dogrel

If, as the bookies expect, Fontaines DC walk off with the top prize, they will be an unpopular winner within some circles. Last year’s breakthrough success have become the band that music snobs love to hate. A profile in The New York Times drew particular ire on social media for pitching the band members as bookish, with a vocal group of critics questioning the group’s integrity. Looking at the music, Dogrel is a fine calling card, the kind of melodic, accessible and energetic rock record to energise the genre for a generation. It would be a worthy winner.
Chances
★★★★★

Opinion splitter: Girl Band

Opinion splitter: Girl Band
BRYAN MEADE
Girl Band
The Talkies

So blisteringly breathtaking is The Talkies that it wouldn’t be hyperbole to describe Girl Band as one of the most exciting rock bands in the world right now. Playing fast and loose with form, the group ended a four-year hiatus with an addictive, noisy guitar record that sounds as though it was made without guitars. The quartet split opinions, though, with just as many meeting their music with bafflement as wonder. It may mean that the judges will find it hard to reach a consensus to crown this the winning album.
Chances ★★★

Playful: Jafaris

Playful: Jafaris
TOBI ISAAC-IREIN/ DAVE DONNELLY
Jafaris
Stride

A win for Jafaris would be great recognition for Diffusion Lab, the innovative production hub central to Ireland’s hip-hop scene. Diffusion shows just what can be achieved from an artist-focused approach. The Dublin venture is a one-stop shop for production, management and media production at a cost that recognises the financial realities regularly faced by independent artists. It has allowed Jafaris the artistic space to produce a great record in Stride. Warm, playful and accessible, this is a debut that flits between R&B, neo-soul, hip-hop, pop and electronica. Good as it is, however, it won’t win.
Chances ★★

Deceptively intricate: Junior Brother

Deceptively intricate: Junior Brother
Junior Brother
Pull the Right Rope

When Junior Brother, aka Ronan Kealy, emerged with songs about being hungover in mass, sung in a heavy Kerry accent, you might have thought him a joke. “Off-kilter” and “quirky” have become terms to describe a brand of folk music that brings Richie Kavanagh to mind. Vocals aside, Kealy’s music is deceptively intricate and layered with rhythms reminiscent of a fiddler. He’s the type of unconventional artist that Choice likes to reward, and may fill the centre of a Venn diagram with the more experimental Girl Band on one end and Lankum on the other.
Chances ★★★

Radie Peat of Lankum

Radie Peat of Lankum
BRYAN MEADE
Lankum
The Livelong Day

The nailed-on favourite among those in the know, Lankum — like the Gloaming before them — are the trad band that hipsters adore. Their third record has generated a lot of guff about how the group have transformed the genre. Rather, what sets The Livelong Day apart is its emphasis on atmosphere and its filling out of the album form. From the gloomy cover art to the eerie drone soundscapes, this wildly cinematic work immerses you in Lankum’s dour and gloomy world. It would be a shock if the group lost out to anyone other than Fontaines DC.
Chances ★★★★★

Outsider: Sorcha Richardson

Outsider: Sorcha Richardson
BRYAN MEADE
Sorcha Richardson
First Prize Bravery

A rank outsider, Sorcha Richardson’s earworm of a debut record could be this year’s surprise package. The shock would be in keeping with the Dubliner’s first album — Richardson’s preceding EPs and singles gave little indication that the artist had the consistency of material to create a record this good. It made First Prize Bravery all the more startling, with its blending of folk-rock, perky pop and electronica. Ultimately, this is a record that has probably not received the full attention it deserves.
Chances ★★★★

Brave entry: Soak

Brave entry: Soak
Soak
Grim Town

Bridie Monds-Watson’s mellow indie-folk debut, Before We Forgot How to Dream, won the 2015 Choice Music Prize and earned the then 19-year-old a prestigious Mercury Music Prize nomination. So it was brave of the Derry songwriter to step away from the sound that drew such endorsements for the more immediate and upbeat pop of Grim Town. The move yields some of her best tracks yet in Déjà Vu, Everybody Loves You and Get Set Go Kid, but Grim Town tails off after its early promise to become a slog of a record.
Chances ★★

Punk attitude: Maija Sofia

Punk attitude: Maija Sofia
Maija Sofia
Bath Time

From rural Co Galway, Maija Sofia is perhaps the least-known artist on the shortlist. Her debut was released to unanimous praise at the end of November, and it is a fine collection of delicate, slow-moving folk songs. Each track gives voice to women misrepresented throughout history, including the Sixties model Edie Sedgwick, the novelist Jean Rhys, and Bridget Cleary, the last “witch” burned in Ireland. All are delivered with a decidedly punk attitude to make another strong contender that will have its supporters among the judges.
Chances ★★★


The winner of the Choice Music Prize will be announced at a live event in Vicar Street, Dublin, on Thursday
 
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There’s something amiss with the Irish music industry when the Choice Music Prize — the award for the year’s best Irish album — goes to a band that no longer exists. O Emperor disbanded shortly before winning the prize last year, because they couldn’t make being in a band work financially. It was odd to watch their victory being celebrated in a room full of representatives of an industry unable to offer the support they needed.

On Thursday, the managers, bookers and producers of the Irish music industry will gather in Vicar Street for the ceremony. Discussion will centre on what a great place Irish music is in.

It’s true — 2019 was exceptional — but there’s still a disconnect between the mechanisms of the industry and the musicians working within it. Privately, artists speak of poor pay, little support and few opportunities to earn.




The real choice some of the nominees may face is whether they can continue a career in music.

...

Have been saying that for a while now; the trend of small bands, (usually a duo, with just a laptop) playing big festivals.

There seems to be have been a major lack of full bands playing on the Lower rung slots of the bigger festivals the last few years.

It’s probably says a lot about the affordability and availability of practice spaces and playing/upkeeping instruments as opposed to:
a laptop a mic and a pair of headphones in a Bedroom.

I don’t think it’s overly genre specific. But I imagine they are cheaper to Book, not to mention there’s less labour and time spent setting them up / quicker /easier change over between sets.

I imagine it’s probably been a global trend in urban areas a while now
 

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