James Blake Wins UK’s Mercury Prize

London post-dubstep electronic producer and songwriter James Blake has this morning won the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, the prestigious world-renowned award for British or Irish album of the year.

Taking home a prize of £20,000 (A$33,868), Blake's Overgrown beat other hotly-tipped nominees include Arctic Monkey's AM, Disclosure's Settle, Savages' Silence Yourself and perhaps the favourite Laura Mvula's Sing To The Moon

“It creeps in and out of identity and psyche with passionate grace,” we said of the record earlier this year, adding “It's good to hear Blake hasn't been stifled by 'second album syndrome', but rather seems to have flourished under the pressure."

Blake himself told us of the album, “I'm really proud of it. I really like it. I think, when I came out of the studio, and had been out of the studio for a while, listening to it at home after a couple of months of not listening to it, I got a real sense of how minimal and intricate it actually feels in a way that could have only been made if I really spent a long time on my own making this music.”

The full list of this year's nominees included:

Arctic Monkeys – AM
David Bowie – The Next Day
Disclosure – Settle
Foals – Holy Fire
Jake Bugg – Jake Bugg
James Blake – Overgrown
Jon Hopkins – Immunity
Laura Marling – Once I Was An Eagle
Laura Mvula – Sing To The Moon
Rudimental – Home
Savages – Silence Yourself
Villagers – {Awayland}

The previous winners of the Mercury Prize:

1992: Primal Scream – Screamadelica
1993: Suede – Suede
1994: M People – Elegant Slumming
1995: Portishead – Dummy
1996: Pulp – Different Class
1997: Roni Size/Reprazent – New Forms
1998: Gomez – Bring It On
1999: Talvin Singh – OK
2000: Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour Of Bewilderbeast
2001: PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
2002: Ms Dynamite – A Little Deeper
2003: Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner
2004: Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
2005: Antony & The Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
2006: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2007: Klaxons – Myths Of The Near Future
2008: Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
2009: Speech Debelle – Speech Therapy
2010: The xx – xx
2011: PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
2012: Alt-J – An Awesome Wave

Australia's own $30,000 The Coopers Amp album prize is loosely based on the ideals of the Mercury Prize.