Burial favourite for Mercury Music Prize

Currently only 20 votes between first and fifth!

at more than one point there were two albums tied for the lead.

would be nice...

as they deserve it for having a fourth fantastic album in a row.

Radiohead, Burial, Laura Marling, BSP, they'd all be good too.

MIA should have been shortlisted though

because so many of them are so average. fuck buttons got my vote but even that's hardly a classic

that there's not one album on the list that people are still goin to be listening to in three years time. as i said, maybe fuck buttons

who genuinely love their music only listen to new music'? fuck off! no wonder so many people around here express daft opinions like 'the beatles were shit'..i listen to tons of new music (i'd say about 3 hours of new music a day) AND i listen to classics.
just cos you're passionate about music doesn't mean you shouldn't have standards, in fact it should make you more demanding about what's truly great and what's merely good. but then again, you are the guy who saw fit to award 'weekend in the city' a 9 rating.
for the record, i own 7 of the albums and i've heard enough material from the other ones to decide that they're not worth my hard-earned.

...only just over 50 per cent qualified to state what you did above? Well done. And where do I say 'only new music'? Rarely was the word I used, and I'd imagine that most people who frequently visit DiS for news on current artists breakthrough and mainstream listen to those acts much more than they do, say, the Beatles, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Wire, Public Enemy, etc.

I own many a 'classic' album - whatever you mean by classic (presumably you're referring to albums that critics too old to remember the last time they went to a gig that wasn't seated consider genre- and era-defining documents and artifacts? Fuck them, fucking dinosaurs) - but rarely turn to them when there's such a brilliant stream of new music coming out week in, week out. It only takes a little time to turn over some stones and discover something magic, something to rate alongside these perceived 'classics', which are only 'classics' today because nobody has had the balls to properly stand up for records released since the birth and death of punk. To move the goalposts. To stick two up to John Lydon and tell him 'Bollocks' is bollocks, and piss on the graves of Harrison and Lennon spelling 'only two songs off the white album are any good, you self-absorbed self-aggrandizing dead twats' as they go.

I HATE the notion of classic albums, given the wholly subjective nature of the absorption and assessment of art - unless you're analyzing the process over the product, exactly what are your guidelines? There were ten or more albums released last year that were better than Sgt Peppers, or Dark Side, if not more... there was because that's progress, evolution, development; it's refinement and redirection and the embracing of technology and sociological elements that simply never existed before the time of those records' gestations.

Music is movement, not moments; it's not judged on static fossils, but on living processes. Snapshots serve as reminders, lists as spotters guides, but there's no such thing as categorical zeniths, as absolute classics. How can there be? If there was everyone making music today would give up.

Saying that the Beatles were shit is not a daft opinion. It is an opinion. Do you not see that that's the beauty of such instantaneous art as pop music - one man's brilliance is another's annoyance. If you can't see that standards exist only in the mind of the individual, and that the archaic notion of classics is born of redundant commentators alone, then truly you're discussing music in the wrong place. Go talk to a wall.

What does it matter what I gave an album that came out last year? What's the relation of that to this argument? I like Bloc Party.

failed maths!

'one man's brilliance is another's annoyance'. so why am i not allowed to express my opinion that your pluto list is full of, in my opinion, average albums? you called my opinion rubbish. there have been, in my opinion, some outstanding albums released in the last 12 months: hercules and love affair, cut copy, crystal castles, fleet foxes off the top of my head..atlas sound and times new viking are two brilliant albums that i discovered through this website.

i think it's a bit sad that you're so militantly pro "new music", rarely looking backwards and constantly pressing forwards (although i suppose it's an effect of being a new-music mogul). Patronisingly enough, i feel a bit sorry for you

And just because you don't like "the classics" doesn't mean there isn't a hell of a lot to discover from times already passed. I could name a fuckload of records from The Past which are better than xyz. And basically, much as i take onboard your opinion on music being about movements, it's about moments as well. In fact, if you totally reject moments then you might as well stop talking about records altogether - go immerse yourself in the artists involved with a scene and view it from a totally organic perspective. Because once it gets pressed onto wax that's it. The motherfucker is a relic, a document, an artifact of a specific time and place and feeling.

Are the records on the list going to stand up in the future? Who knows. Will you want to listen to them again in the future? I would hope so

Far from it. I appreciate precedents. I look back to move forward, but forward is the direction one must move.

Of course a record is a 'moment' of sorts, the distillation of discourse to that point. My point is that it's dangerous to dwell upon conventionally recognised 'classics' given the individuality of assessments, changing tastes and the development of technology.

Take it to the Quietus... did a review for them the other day, actually.

pretty qualified to make the statement: 'PROBABLY because SO MANY of them are so average'.

Lose eleven million indie points.

people don't win because they are ace!

honestly :P

to take one example, portishead's third was done a whole lot better a full 10 years ago. mezzanine by massive attack was the album

on burial & marling but I'm not smart so I've banked on elbow producing a shock

that was such a pathetic rant, proper funny seeing peasants like you get fired up about nothing