NEWCASTLE multi-instrumentalist Alex Knight, aka Brightness, could be poised to join the likes of Courtney Barnett, The Drones, The Jezabels and Augie March after his latest album was nominated for the Australian Music Prize.
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On Tuesday Knight's second album Brightness was added to the long list of 107 albums nominated for the $30,000 prize, which is considered among the highest honours in Australian music.
The 40-person judging panel of media, music retail and artists ranks the albums purely on artistic merit, with no consideration taken of commercial success, unlike the ARIA Awards.
"It's nice to see the record getting recognised by a body like the AMP," Knight said. "It's a particularly prestigious prize."
"The ARIA Awards seem to only be bands that are already doing well, whereas this has a blind fold element about it.
"It's just about the record. For that reason it's a lot more aligned with my value system."
Brightness was released on October 25 through Mushroom's indie label I Oh You, and while it failed to spark commercial interest, it was met with critical acclaim. The dreamy indie-rock record was even Double J's feature album.
The AMP short list of nine albums will be selected in January before the winner is announced in March. Brightness is competing with the likes of Jimmy Barnes (My Criminal Record), Sampa The Great (The Return), Julia Jacklin (Crushing), Thelma Plum (Better In Blak), Holy Holy (My Own Pool Of Light), Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (Ghosteen), Hermitude (Pollyanarchy) and Stella Donnelly (Beware Of The Dogs) for the 2019 prize.
Regardless of the album's success in the AMP, Knight said the record has freed him to take his songwriting in a bolder direction for his next project.
"Having it out, it feels like I don't want to repeat myself on the next one," he said. "I want it to be more different from the last one, than this one was from the first one [Teething]. I want it to be a bigger step stylistically.
"It's all been flushed out on that record, which is good. Sometimes you feel cramped creatively and having it out, it's sort of created an open road ahead for me to experiment with different things."
