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Alt-J were named the winners of the 2012 Mercuty Music Prize, with the band revealing plans to get extremely drunk after winning the award for an album described as 'mesmerising' and 'compelling' by the award show boss.
Simon Frith, the chair of the judging panel, said, "Alt-J's An Awesome Wave combines unexpected shards of sound with mesmerising rhythms, compelling melodies and intriguing songs. A tantalising and delightful album."
He went on to say that it was fitting that it was a band's debut album which won a prize that valued fresh sounds.
Frith added: "We hadn't heard a sound like that before. If it tells us something about music now it is that the concept of genres is problematic. All these albums are taking interesting things from all sorts of genres."
At a press conference after winning the Mercury award, the band were polite and relatively quiet, considering.
"We are not really used to all this," said guitarist Joe Newman, as reported by The Guardian. "We're bowled over beyond belief."
Gus Unger-Hamilton, the keyboardist of the band, said that he loves the album "because we made it, it was just us at uni, just us four guys in a band."
Alt-J perform at the 2012 Mercury Prize awards.
The band had previously said that they believed their chance of winning to be quite small, so the win was a pleasant surprise.
When asked how they would sped the £200,000 winning cheque, Newman said, "We are going to go and get really pissed. Christ - we've just won a Mercury award."
The awards also featured Plan B opening the show with a performance of his track 'ill Manors', with his band wearing balaclavas onstage. The awards have been changed this year in an attempt to try and revitalise the prize - DJ Lauren Laverne hosted the event, instead of Jools Holland, and the Roundhouse hosted the night instead of Grosvenor House.
Martin Talbot, chief executive of the Official Charts Company, said, "An Awesome Wave is almost an identikit Mercury winner, but also an excellent album."
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