The Australian Music Prize for the best Australian album of the year is awarded on Friday (early disclosure: I will be part of the judging panel again, as I have been since its inception) and the Shortlist is excitingly diverse and fascinating. Sampa The Great – Birds And The BEE9 Paul Kelly – Life Is Fine Jen Cloher – Jen Cloher The Vampires – The Vampires Meet Lionel Loueke Beaches – Second Of Spring HTML Flowers – Chrome Halo Liars – TFCF Darcy Baylis – Intimacy & Isolatio

In a time of resistance and protest around the world, the Australian Music Prize has been awarded to an indigenous duo whose album is a raised middle finger to a complacent middle Australia. Reclaim Australia, by hip hop duo A.B Original - Yorta Yorta man Briggs and Ngarrindjeri man Trials - is an angry, funny, plainspoken and brutal take on racism, police behaviour, political doublespeak and what it means to be something other than white, safe and in power. Taking its name b

An album forged from grief by an internationally renowned songwriter, a record made for $1000 by self-described “scummy little punks”, and a sonically complex hip-hop album more than 15 years in the making will compete for this year’s prestigious Australian Music Prize. The Shortlist for the 12th AMP, whose prize of $30,000 makes it the country’s richest cash reward for an album, features nine acts almost as diverse as the Australian music industry. The best known of the cont

This weekend, as I have for 13 years in different forms, I join 15 other judges in reducing the Australian Music Prize longlist to the shortlist of 9, which will be announced in a few weeks. This will be the 13th iteration of the most prestigious award for artists making albums and it will likely spark more arguments over the appropriateness of our choices, the appalling absence of certain artists and the bias of this latest panel of judges. Twas ever thus, and not just from