KOKO Asia Speaks…

The shortlist for this years prestigious Mercury Prize was announced this week with chart toppers Kasabian and La Roux widely tipped for top spot.

The prize is seen as a sign for future success or cementing a reputation as one of the best bands in the UK given previous winners such as Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Portishead and Pulp.

This year’s shortlist is a snapshot of some of the most talented and exciting artists around, with Glasvegas, Florence and the Machine, Friendly Fires and The Horrors all in contention.

Making up the remainder are Bat For Lashes who receive their second nomination, Lisa Hannigan, Speech Debelle, the Invisible, Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Led Bib. Out of the whole list only Bat For Lashes have received a nomination for the award previously.

The Mercury Prize is now in its 17th year and aims to honour some of the best new albums from the UK and Ireland in the past 12 months, with seven of the twelve contenders having just released debut albums.

Tom Meighan from Kasabian recently told the BBC: “I like making music but it’s really nice to get the recognition. I think it’s deserved, why not, eh?”
The Leicester foursome who are due to play for MTV’s World Stage in Kuala Lumpur on August 15th have been nominated for their third album West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

Elbow were suprising but deserved winners last year with their fourth studio album The Seldom Seen Kid.

Florence and the Machine have become joint favourites with Kasabian to take the title and have been garnering more exposure and popularity since they won a Brit Award last year for best rising star.

The prize was started back in 1992 with the inaugural award going to psychedelic rock trendsetters Primal Scream for their album Screamadelica which broke them into the mainstream. For your pleasure we have stuck up videos from each of the nominations on kokoasia.com. Mayo.

Unless you have been living under rock for all of 2009 it’s been fairly impossible not to notice the return of Britpop darlings Blur.

Their headlining act at this year’s Glastonbury festival was the first time the recently reunited band had been on stage together since they last headlined the same festival back in 1998. Now after only a few weeks of acclaimed performances the band, yet again, seems to be calling it a day.

The excitement started back in November last year, when Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon confirmed that they had settled their differences and were ready to reunite the legendary 90’s outfit once more. The announcement of their reunion gig at London’s Hyde Park was met with a flurry of excitement back in blighty and rumours soon circulated that they would be the headliners for the forthcoming festivals.

The demand to see Damon and co was in fact so great that the Hyde park reunion gig sold out within 2 minutes, making the band have to add another date to satisfy the wanting fans after a decade in the dark.

Sure enough the sell out Hyde park gigs were the catalyst to again propel Blur to main stages all around the country. After delivering the sort of headline performance that Glastonbury has come to expect the band encountered some difficulties when preparing for their recent slot at Scotland’s T in the Park festival.

Shortly before being due to go on, Graham Coxon was rushed to hospital with a suspected case of food poisoning, delaying the start of their set for an hour and a half. When co-headliners Snow Patrol heard of Coxon’s plight they agreed to delay the start of their set by an hour in order to buy the band some much needed time. 90 minutes later Blur calmly walked on stage with Damon simply saying “Hi” before bursting into a rendition of their debut single, ‘She’s So High’.

As the song came to an end, Damon offered a fuller explanation of the nights events. “We nearly didn’t make it. Graham literally walked out of a hospital to come here. He’s alright.” Before subtly dropping the bombshell – “This is our last gig”.

At the moment it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what Damon meant and it leaves a lot more questions than answers. Are they breaking up again? Are they taking a break to write new material? Is Damon going back to focus on Gorilaz? At the moment it’s still all up in the air.

Blur reuniting is one of the stories of 2009 as anyone who was lucky enough to see them live will testify. They clearly still have the passion, the talent and most of all the fans, so what would be the sense to walk away from it all now?

Something tells me Blur will be back, and in an even bigger way. Mayo.