Museums & Music

Edinburgh Trio Young Fathers Win the Mercury Prize 2014

Edinburgh based trio, Young Fathers, have become the surprise winners of the Barclaycard Mercury Prize 2014. The Mercury Prize annually celebrates the best British albums of the year, giving a £20,000 prize to the lucky winners as judged by an expert panel. The band received the prize at last night's award ceremony in the Roundhouse, North London, announced by UK DJ Nick Grimshaw. Young Fathers create an eclectic sound, with a mash up of hip-hop, gospel melodies and punky electro tunes, they have been described as 'a Liberian/Nigerian/Scottish psychedelic hip-hop electro boy band.' The best album of the last 12 months was deemed to be their debut record 'Dead'. 'Dead' was the second lowest selling album on this year's shortlist having sold just 2,386 copies since its release in February but that doesn't seem to have effected the choices of the judges, a mix of music industry professionals, music critics and other public figures.

With a rather obscure shortlist for this year's prize, only 2 of the 12 albums had actually reached the Number 1 spot in the charts over the last 12 months, Royal Blood's self titled debut album and Bombay Bicycle Club's 'So Long See You Tomorrow'. Young Fathers have beaten this year's favourites, rock-duo Royal Blood, alt-RnB act FKA Twigs and singer/poet Kate Tempest who were all tipped to win this year's coveted prize. In contrast, Young Fathers have very much been the underdog of the competition, with odds of just 14-1 before Wednesday night's announcement. Despite not winning, FKA Twigs, GoGo Penguin and Royal Blood have all seen a significant sales increase since being nominated for the prize back in September.

The band, made up of friends G, Alloysious and Kayus seem unfazed by their sudden monetary windfall saying 'What happens with the money is not our priority...We are constantly writing and trying to be as creative as possible, so we are just continuing with that. We are not trying to hide anything, we want as many people as possible to listen to our music.' Young Fathers are already in the process of recording another album in Berlin and stated that their £20,000 prize money will help to fund that. Band member G Hastings also comments 'We'll take it in our stride...We always wanted to make something bigger than the city we were living in.'

Check out 'I heard' from Young Father's debut album 'Dead'