Alt-J win the Barclaycard Mercuary Prize Awards

The 2012 Barclaycard Mercury Prize awards started and ended with a bang; awarding indie-pop quartet Alt-J (∆) the rightful winners of the most important music award of the year.

The Barclaycard Mercury Prize awards (previously named The Mercury Prize) have had a whole host of winners from different backgrounds and completely different genres over the past 21 years. Winners include: Pulp for album 'Different Class', Ms. Dynamite for album 'A Little Deeper', The xx for album 'The xx' and now: 2012's winner Alt-J (∆) for album 'An Awesome Wave'.

Nominations for this years Barclaycard Mercury Prize are as follows:

Alt-J(∆) - An Awesome Wave
Ben Howard - Every Kingdom
Django Django - Django Django
Field Music - Plumb
Jessie Ware - Devotion
Lianne La Havas - Is Your Love Big Enough?
Micheal Kiwanuka - Home Again
Plan B - Ill Manors
Richard Hawley - Standing at the Sky's Edge
Roller Trio - Roller Trio
Sam Lee - Ground of it's Own
The Maccabees - Given to the Wild

The 21st ceremony started off with a controversial burst from rapper, actor and film director Plan B. Preforming his lead single 'Ill Mannors' from his prize nominated album of the same name. 'Ill Manors' could be named as a juxtaposed album: compared to the other eleven candidates on the short-list. It's a gut-hitting strong album which packs a punch; which is why it deserved it's rightful place on the shortlist.

 As soon as the final bang from Plan B was issued we were whisked into a world of co-ordinated shirts and mysteriously hazy drum beats - in the form of Django Django. The Scottish art-rock band's self-entitled album is one of the more iconic indie records to break through this year.

                             Performances from U.K's king of modern day folk, Ben Howard, North-East-born-and-bred indie rockers Field Music and 24 year-old soal singer Michael Kiwanuka also followed creating a more interesting air to the Roundhouse full of well-to-do music critics and famous faces.

Alt-J's performance of lead-single 'Breezeblocks' settled the argument on why this four-piece should be rightful winners of the award. Layers of rhymical beats and fragments of twinkling eyes - created a magical and effortless performance; summing up what 'An Awesome Wave' really is. It's a poem: a tale. A tale of boys going out into the world and creating something that is going to get teenagers shoe-gazing and bopping away to the riffs of guitars and an amazingly unique lyrical structure.

Beating other favourites The Maccabees and Ben Howard, Alt-J vowed that the 'Mercuary curse' would not affect their preforming or writing in the future. 'We have a real strong set of songs, future songs' is what Newman from the band said, rubbishing claims of the curse that may be set to develop over them.

All Mercury short-listed artists albums are available to purchase now
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