The Uranus Music Prize // And The Winner Is…

As the hangovers kick in for those industry bods who made it to the Mercury Music Prize last night (it was won by the XX if you missed it), so we’re going to announce the winner of our inaugural Uranus Music Prize.

A small team of writers (myself, Scott McMillan and Matt Poacher) decided on a list of records that we thought offered a true alternative to the usual fodder offered up, without the issue of having to spend money to submit your release of considersation…

So, without further ado the winner is…

Richard Skelton – Landings

Landings, an album and book release, is the culmination of a three year relationship Richard Skelton shared with the landscape of Anglezarke in the West Pennine moors. In a way it is the recording of a disappearance – of a person enveloped in grief, seeking to dissolve the boundaries between inside and outside, to escape by becoming part of the tides of the land. As part of this process Skelton used the landscape as both a kind of vast studio and an instrument, using the elements as a backdrop for the minutely pieced together nature of his compositions – which, like his spare writing style built from historical readings and impressionistic encounters with the land, are compositions built from very little: accordion drones, bowed strings, the hush of water on stone. Indeed sometimes Skelton’s method seems so inscrutable, yet so powerful and emotionally affecting that you wonder if you’re listening to a form of alchemy. Which in the end, it might just be.

Mr. Skelton had this to say about winning this inaugural prize:

What can I say? I’m honoured. “Landings” is, for me, a deeply personal album. I’m sometimes filled with a strange sensation when I think that those recordings are out there in the public domain – that a fragment of northern England has become untethered and, even now, finds tenure in far-flung places – in Tuscon, Arizona; Valencia, Spain or Luleå, Sweden.

I deliberated for a long while over whether or not to share these private musical gestures with others. To quote from the book, “are things under the soil best left there?” In the end it was the act of writing about the process which gave me the impetus to move forward. It may not be a fashionable subject, but “Landings” is about landscape and nature. If even one person connects more deeply with their natural environment as a result of listening to the music, or reading the book, then it will have been worthwhile.

Thanks again for this award. I’d also like to thank John at Type Records, for getting the music out to more people than I could on my own, and for allowing me the creative freedom to use my own photography for the vinyl and CD editions.

And that’s a wrap. Look out for next year’s list…