"Darius Versus The Venga Boys": Fat Roland's guide to the 2011 Mercury Music Prize nominations

Adele – 21

Imagine a human centipede but with cats. Now imagine the resulting howls autotuned into brown noise which is then magnified into an eternal feedback loop which bursts every eardrum on earth, eventually leading to the death of all humankind. Adele wants to be this, but actually she's just pleasant like a meadow or a Sunday.

Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi

The voice of God if God were a woman, which She is. In a yell-off, she'd scream Florence and her stupid Machine into a cocked hat. Her mouth is so cavernous, it is used as a venue for her own gigs. The entire Mercury Prize awards ceremony is taking place on her tonsils, so everyone's going to have to be careful because one gulp and we're all stomach juice. Probable winner, then, but only because of gastric terror.

Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!

Don't be daft, our kid. You can't build a rocket in t'yard. You'll send t'pigeons reet daft and they'll not be eatin' their seed. I'm using t'NME for bedding for t'whippets again coz they're still using "fooking" every time a Northerner swears in their interviews. If only Elbow had named themselves after a less innocuous body part. Cock, maybe.

Everything Everything – Man Alive

It's it's good good to to see see a a truly truly original original debut debut album album on on the the Mercury Mercury Music Music Prize Prize shortlist shortlist. Everything Everything Everything Everything are are a a group group that that talks talks fast fast and keeps keeps breaking breaking into into falsetto falsetto. Oh oh and and their their name name has has this this in-in-built-built echo echo that that can can get get rather rather annoying annoying annoying annoying annoying.

Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam

The hattiest musician in the list, Ghostpoet does this singing / rapping thing that Plan B does except, unlike Plan B, he doesn't make you want you to put your tongue in a blender. A favourite for people who talk about "homegrown", "eclectic" and "seriously, where did you get that hat". Disclaimer: don't put your tongue in a blender. Waste disposals are fine.

Gwilym Simcock – Good Days at Schloss Elmau

Ba da ba da tootle tootle jazzhands. Don't bother.

James Blake – James Blake

Things that have been trendy, even only ironically: Nuclear disarmament. The 2CV. Poll tax riots. Grunge. Yoof television. Pez. Playing on railway lines. Things Can Only Get Better. Quad bikes. The colour yellow. Happy-slapping. Crystal meth. Friends Reunited. Barack Obama. Planking. James Blake. What's happened to everyone that was into those things? They're all DEAD FROM OLD AGE, that's what.

Katy B – On a Mission

Born to mixed race parents in Leeds, she studied performing arts before answering an advert in a newspaper to join a pop band called Touch. Taking on management from Annie Lennox's mentor Simon Fuller, Katy B's band changed their name and they had worldwide success as promotors of 'girl power'. Katy B (pictured above) is famous for her leopard-print dresses, massive hair and being 'scary'. (Have you gone to the wrong Wikipedia page? - ed.)

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine

The token celtic inclusion on the list, this collaboration between a Scottish singer songwriter and an electronic music genius makes this the new Edwin Collins Versus Brian Eno. Wait. No, that's a lazy comparison. Darius Versus The Venga Boys. No. Too far the other way. Del Amitri Versus Bibio. That'll do. You can use that on your album cover, guys.

Metronomy – The English Riviera

Truly brilliant electro disco with more hooks than a velcro factory. We've been waiting flipping ages for a new Metronomy album: we've been looking at our watches more than quality checkers in a watch factory. The Look is already one of the best singles of 2011, and they've got more sharp hairstyles than a mohican factory. Their live sets are simple, ordered and have more massive chest-lights than a, um, a factory that specialises in body-mounted illumination solutions.

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

If "what if I take my problem to the United Nations" isn't one of 2011's most catchy lyrics, I'll eat my 50ft Queenie promo CD. Polly has been unleashing her own version of Nick Cave hell since 1926, but she's on this list because her latest album was a true revelation. No-one ever talks about her amazing hair, though. OMG look at her hair. Hasn't she got amazing hair? She should win because of her hair. I love her hair. Her hair is the best thing about this list OMG LMAO FML.

Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy

If you got a talent, you gonna have to use it / To bag a nomination for Mercury Music / Ain't exactly 808 State's Cubik / His pop songs are sharper than a toothpick / From Paris, Scunthorpe or Munich / He's on an odyssey like Stanley Kubrick / But he can't be quick to grab the winner's tunic / The token pop man will probably lose it.

Falty DL's been building something in his garage

I've been juggling three records with my many eared-tentacles of music appreciation. But I only want to talk about one, which is Falty DL's You Stand Uncertain.

Much has been made of DL's genre-slurping production skills, taking in two decades of dance music. It does genre-hop, but mainly in one one spot: UK garage. Let's get this clear: the new Falty DL album is a garage record. Garage. Not techno. Not bass music. It's garage.

You can bang on all you want about dubstep, post-dubstep and chilldubwavestep, but just take its lead track Brazil featuring Lily MacKenzie: it's proper UK garage. That's garage. It's a word you won't have seen on a blog for about 46 years.

You Stand Uncertain is Planet Mu's most notable release this year so far (although Boxcutter's got some interesting stuff on the way), and it is Mr Falty's follow-up album to his debut platter Love Is A Liability. The big female vocal choons on the album, such as Gospel Of Opal, seem to be a statement. It's Falty pinning up a six-foot banner emblazoned with the phrase I'M BACK.

Onto the outside of his garage.

There are many tools in his garage, though. Open Space is a good example of the variance on offer here: it lurches from tingling fairy techno to dark, low-hung rave (a tendency even more obviously splashed over the playful Lucky Luciano).

And I'm deeply in love with the early-Grid snare clickiness on The Pacifist. He's got that retro feel yet again.

You Stand Uncertain is an impressive achievement and, for my money, sets the standard more so than another one of the three records I'm hammering at the moment, namely James Blake's eponymous and ubiquitous debut album.

The third one? It's not an electronica record, so I can't mention it. All I can tell you is she has the same name as an invisible rabbit and she sings about England.

Five vocalists I definitely want to work with if I was a music producer who was definitely wanting to work with any one of five vocalists

Wesley Willis

Epically prolific Chicaco-born schizophrenic who reached Shaun Ryder-like heights with Rock N Roll McDonald's. Try this rhyming couplet for size: "A Big Mac has 26 grams of fat, a Quarter-Pounder has 28 grams of fat." Although his vocals were like a drunk hyena being attacked by a cabal of badgers, he brought a warm humanity that would have provided rich material for an overwrought X Factor biography piece - if he hadn't died before X Factor was invented, that is.

Dizzee Rascal

He sounds like he wants to sound like Scooby Doo. Enough said.

The scary woman from Human Nature

Let the carnival begin. Every pleasure every sin. Gary Clail's Human Nature was a strange old beast from the early 90s: a fairly standard dance track with the kind of choppy pianos that were de rigeur at the time, but with added Scary Transvestite who seemed to be dressed in the contents of 20 thousand grandma's jewellery boxes. At least, I think she was a transvestite - or, to be more accurate, drag artist. She sounded like a heroin-hit Boy George. Wait. It's Boy George, isn't it?

50 Cent (pictured)

The second most famous Jackson of all time (yes, that's his real name) decided to Get Rich instead of Die Trying, which must have taken a lot of courage. His rapping is singularly the most awful style since Robbie Williams tried to toast all over his middle eights. I think it's meant to sound lazy, but it just comes across as... well, lazy. He is the Barney The Dinosaur of rap, although in honour of that, his vocal chords should be declared the fifth element of hip hop. Despite my mockery, I would love to hear his version of Squarepusher's Red Hot Car.

Polly Harvey

The Mercury Music Prize got it right in 2001. Potato-gizzling -guzzling* sculptress Harvey is a folk singer from the depths of hell and she is wonderful. She is the most famous saxophonist not primarily known for playing the saxomophone. Her vocals are like felt drizzled in acid. She is definitely not to be confused with the depressive member of East 17, nor with the failed footballer and So Solid Crew MC, nor with the rabbit from Donnie Darko that tormented Jimmy Stewart as he jumped off that bridge (I think I got that right).

* Edit: I preferred 'gizzling'.

Crouching at the base of a cardboard themometer muttering something about there being too many guitars

Manc convention insists I be excited about the Manchester International Festival. If I had an oversize cardboard thermometer with 'not much electronica' written at the bottom in black marker pen and 'lots of lovely electronica' written on a piece of star-shaped yellow card blue-tacced to the top, I would hum and haw and then stick my strip of (Top Gear style) card saying MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL quite low on the chart, perhaps very near the bottom.

So no trendy experimental music for my tastes. I will have to make do. arms crossed, lip curled, with Lou Reed (old man's music), Kanye West (hmm, maybe not) and PJ Harvey (oh yes yes and thrice yes).

Or I could save up my pennies for the holy Mancunian marriage of the Fall and the Happy Mondays (record cover pictured) shambling through a joint gig. There'll be nothing civil about that partnership, I can assure thee.

All the events can be seen on the events calendar, as quite rightly they should be.

Oh, incidentally, one of the debates featured in the line-up is called 'Is TV good for society?'. Well, let me just start the debate by giving an in depth opinion on the subject:

Yes.

Does any of the Festival take your fancy? And shall we go together? I've got a megarider, so we'll have to get the bus in.