🎏 The Neptune Prize 2025 - The Long List - SUBMIT Your Nominees NOW

Music
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It’s time to nominate an album for Drowned in Sound’s alternative to the Mercury Music Prize.

Simply post the name of an album you’d like to nominate in the repliesbelow

  • please format as Artist Name - Album Name to help with the admin
  • include a sentence or two of context / enthusiasm for the record so that people browsing this thread might dip into your recommendation
  • bonus points if you include a bandcamp, youtube or soundcloud link

What is the Neptune Prize?

Our community-nominated, DiS shortlisted, and then community-voted annual list aims to highlight extraordinary, exceptional, and exquisite albums made by artists from the UK & Ireland.

To be eligible, it needs to be an album released between July 13th 2024 and July 13th 2025^ from an artist from the UK & Ireland (or at least primary band members living here since childhood).

In previous years, The Neptune prize shortlist has celebrated records by Self Esteem, FKA Twigs, Floating Points, Kate Nash, Little Simz, Arctic Monkeys, Four Tet, Chvrches, PJ Harvey, Late of the Pier, The Big Moon, M.I.A., Sault, Laura Marling, Cleo Sol, Wild Beasts, Daniel Avery, Daughter, Sprints, Idles, Kelly Lee Owens, My Bloody Valentine, Pet Shop Boys, Portishead, and many more lesser know acts.

The DiS compiled shortlist is always a mix of well known artists, a legend or two, challenging new acts, cult bands, and then lesser known artists making minimal drone concept albums, brutal metal or innovative jazz, angry punk, glitchy-glitch-glitch-bloop-bloop or eloquent af grime.

As with this community, there’s no clear genre boundaries and all music is welcome to be submitted to the longlist.

Unlike the Mercury Prize, there’s no entry fee and artists are welcome to sign up to self nominate an eligible release by including it in the thread below. DiS community members may nominate more than one release.

Timeline

  • Longlist submissions close on Monday September 1st at Noon
  • Shortlist Announced (Early September)
  • Winner Announced (Early October)

^ = Mercury Prize cut off this year is 29th August, but we’ll go with the more standard 12 months for the Neptune Prize. Full list of the Mercury rules here: 2025 Entry Terms & Conditions

Reminder, last year’s winner was…

Previous Shortlists

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Richard Dawson - End of the Middle

A more stripped back affair from one of our greatest modern songwriters, focussing on the stories of the everyday. He just has the most incredibly unique voice and continues to build upon his storytelling ability. I keep coming back to this album and loving it more and more each time.

11 Likes
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My nominees:

FKA TWIGS - EUSEXUA

Been absolutely obsessed with the glitch and grooves of Fka Twigs’ third studio album. A sensual and triumphant album, and I kinda love the one that sounds like Ray of Light-era Madonna. Will be shocked if this doesn’t make the Mercury shortlist. YouTube playlist

KATHRYN JOSEPH - WE WERE MADE PREY.

It’s amazing to hear the progression of this haunting Scottish songwriter’s music into a land of menacing synths… and it somehow still sound oddly soothing.

DJRUM - UNDER TANGLED SILENCE

This record has had a lot of love on the forums this year. It’s got a little bit of Boards of Canada or a blissed out Four Tet, Aphex’s Ambient Works, modern classica Brian Eno vibe. Grainy. Piano soundtracks. All the good stuff.

5 Likes
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Doing this on a phone so cba with any links or typing (have edited and added the bandcamp players to make it easier for me to browse the nominees - Sean)

Rainy Miller - Joseph What Have You Done

aya - hexed

Real Lies - We Will Annihilate Our Enemies

Benefits - Constant Noise

Michael J Blood - spaces in between

W H Lung - Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates

Ruthven - Rough & Ready

Fergus Jones - Ephemera

That’s about it of all the none obvious ones/ones I know are from the UK and Ireland.

4 Likes
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Released 5 days too late for this window

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Christ thought it had been out ages.

That mean’s Los Campesinos! are in and have therefore won, pack it up.

2 Likes
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You wanted a list… (edited: added the players - sean)

Adwaith - Solas

Anna B Savage - You & I are Earth

C Duncan - It’s Only A Love Song

Emma-Jean Thackray - Weirdo

Ex-Vöid - In Love Again

Fightmilk - No Souvenirs

Geordie Greep - The New Sound

Gwenno - Utopia

Hamish Hawk - A Firmer Hand

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpHEeA69KT28g1I_4MFBYV1K2jDFYEEVG

jasmine.4.t - You Are The Morning

Johnny Foreigner - How To Be Hopeful

Laura Marling - Patterns In Repeat

Los Campesinos! - All Hell

mclusky - the world is still here and so are we

Nilufer Yanya - My Method Actor

Overhead, The Albatross - I Leave You This

Pulp - More

Sacred Paws - Jump Into Life

Stereolab - Instant Holograms On Metal Film

Trust Fund - Has It Been A While?

The Tubs - Cotton Crown

The WAEVE - City Lights

9 Likes
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MARIA SOMERVILLE - LUSTER

Shoegazy goodness.

6 Likes
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THE CURE - SONGS OF A LOST WORLD

This will be on the Mercury list or something is really wrong in the world but pretty much the greatest band of all time released one of the albums of their career.

On the day Trump got elected, I went for a bleak walk with it

7 Likes
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PALE BLUE EYES - NEW PLACE

1 Like
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ROMANCE - LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH

Kind of like David Lynch making a record with the Caretaker. Good luck awarding the prize if this wins since nobody knows who the fuck Romance actually is.

1 Like
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Rose Gray - Louder Please

Ultra cool pop bangers

3 Likes
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New Ghost - A Dagger in Every Tide

3 Likes
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DITZ - Never Exhale

Tense, angry post-punk, and probably the leading contender for 2025 AOTY so far. A must listen for anyone who likes Other Half, Protomartyr, METZ, These Arms Are Snakes, the ending sequence of Shame’s Drunk Tank Pink, etc.

8 Likes
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The Bug Club - Very Human Features

3 Likes
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Aya’s record would’ve been my top pick, but as it’s already nominated I’ll offer up this gem:

Tristwch y Fenywod - Tristwch y Fenywod

Very witchy zither-goth record, sung in Welsh, “like an early 4AD recording dredged from the waters of an Anglesey swamp”.

10 Likes
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JABU - A SOFT AND GATHERABLE STAR

“Jabu’s third album proper emerges from the same woozy school of medicated sound as HTRK, Carla Dal Forno, Tirzah, Rat Heart Ensemble and Dean Blunt. Hulking sex jam basslines, slow syrupy beats, and gossamer vocals, with occasional hints of Elizabeth Fraser drizzled across the pots, converge to illuminate this record as if by twilight.” (The Quietus)

3 Likes
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Naima Bock - Below a Massive Dark Land

An intimately arranged and perfectly formed contemplative folky album that was an absolutely perfect seasonal record for autumn - to the extent I’m almost wishing away the last of the summer to enjoy another brisk autumnal walk with this album for company.

3 Likes
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Paddy Hanna - Oylegate

Another great collaboration between Paddy and producer Daniel Fox from Gilla Band (I know he produces everyone these days but this partnership goes back a few years), great classic songwriting and a powerful voice this time synthed up with Alan from Gilla Band’s analogue synth collection on loan.

1 Like