Mercury Prize RSS

Mercury Prize, Sister Ray Selects -

Sister Ray Selects We're all very excited for our first Sister Ray Selects night on Thursday! Live music has been such an instrumental part of all our lives and to have it missing has been tough. We still can't say much about our Secret Headliner, other than they are a 3 piece London group who have been nominated for the Mercury Prize in the past. More importantly they are a favorite of the shop. We're honored to have them as our first headliners, as we couldn't have asked for a more exciting band to launch Sister Ray Selects. It promises to be a...

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Mercury Prize, Mercury Prize 2021, music, records, soho, staff picks, vinyl -

Come on Mercury Prize you’re fooling no one. Dangle the carrot of a freaky jazz album then snatch it away and beat us with the Wolf Alice stick. I jest. Long-time fan of Pharoah Sanders and big fan of early Floating Points so was excited to hear this collaboration. My enduring memory of Sanders is me relaxing to one of his more…adventurous…records when my wife came up from work to make a sandwich. She looked at me with pure bemusement and said “is THIS what you listen to when I’m not here?!?”. While the pairing don’t quite go into the...

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Mercury Prize, Mercury Prize 2021, music, new music, new releases, vinyl, wolf alice -

I've been following Wolf Alice since I was a teenager, and my relationship with their music has shifted in parallel to their progressing style. From the angsty heavy riffs of their brilliant debut to the often melancholic tone of this latest release, it feels like their music has accompanied many of the major shifts of my life. It's hard to express what the old tracks mean to me and the people I grew up with. I can't hear 'Bros' without tearing up, thinking of the years I spent as a teenager following Wolf Alice with friends who are now scattered across...

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Black Country New Road, Mercury Prize, Mercury Prize 2021, music, records, staff picks -

Hi all, Oli here to follow up Eric's favourite nominee in Sister Ray's 2021 Mercury Prize Picks with my personal choice.  I've chosen the debut album by Black Country, New Road, 'For The First Time'.  Emerging from a tidal wave of hype and following rave reviews for their stunning live shows, 'For The First Time' is a mighty beast of an opening statement from the Cambridge seven-piece.Having followed this group from an early gig in 2019, seeing the progression of these tracks has been a thrilling experience and this resulting record is nothing short of breathtaking.  From the fervent opening klezmer jam of...

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hannah peel, Mercury Prize, Mercury Prize 2021, music, records, staff picks -

Hello everyone, it's been a while since we posted any updates on here and I thought there would be no better way to relaunch the Sister Ray blog than with our staff picks for this years Mercury Prize.  My name is Eric. I only recently started at Sister Ray and thought I could introduce myself by taking the first pick.  Hannah Peel has been at the forefront of indie music over the past decade, branching out from Folk music in the early 2010's towards a sound draped in electronica and synth pop in recent years. For me her latest LP...

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