So tonight’s the big night. The Barclaycard Mercury Prize that exists solely to champion music in the UK, mainly through the ‘Albums of the Year’ competition, which celebrates recorded music of all genres by British and Irish artists is finally here. The twelve Albums of the Year that are announced each July will be decided at tonight’s glamorous award ceremony.

Artists that have won this might award include Primal Scream, Suede, M People, Protishead, Pulp, Roni Size/Reprazent, Gomez, Talvin Singh, Badly Drawn Boy, PJ Harvey, Ms. Dynamite, Dizzee Rascal, Franz Ferdinand, Antony and the Johnsons, Artic Monkeys, Klaxons and Elbow. So whos the big guns up for the award this year?

Bat For Lashes – ‘Two Suns’ – Natasha Khan (Bat For Lashes) only narrowly missed out on winning the prize in 2007, and shes already been labelled the new Kate Bush. Her album ‘Two Suns’ reached Number 5 in the UK album charts so she is definitely a strong contender for the award.

Florence and the Machine – ‘Lungs’ – Florence Welch and  the band of musicians known as the Machine only narrowly missed out on getting the Number 1 spot by the king of pop Michael Jackson. Florence’s sound has been described as “soulful indie” and judging by the amount of Air Play there getting, we reckon there a top contender for the prize.

Friendly Fires – ‘Friendly Fires‘ – This electro pop trio have already been tipped to win the competiton by last years winners Elbow. With singles such as ‘Skeleton Boy’, ‘Jump in the pool’ and ‘Kiss Of Life its not hard to see why either. Unfortunatly we dont think its enough to win.

Glasvegas – ‘Glasvegas’ – The Scottish 4 piece first got together in 2003 but only released their debut album last September. Since then the band have gone on to win the XFM New Music Award. Somehow though we cant see them winning the Mercury Price.

Kasabian – ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’ – Kasabian have been around for years but this year they have definitely made a big noise. As well as supporting Oasis on there tour and being special guests of Bruce Springsteen at Glasto, Kasabian’s album when straight to Number 1 in the album charts. There already being labelled the Elbow of this years Mercury and with songs such as ‘Fire’, ‘Underdog’ and ‘Where did all the love go?’ this album is definitely a contender for the award.

La Roux – ‘La Roux’ - Elly Jackson may have got the 80′s hair and style down to a tee but her sound is definitely very 2009. With practically everyone using some form of 80′s synth at the moment, its not suprising that La Roux have had such a sucess with there debut album. We here at Flip towers gave it a 9 out of 10. Unfortunatly for poor La Roux, we think its the 80′s thing that may stop them winning the price. Its a shame really.

The other contenders for the price include Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Speech Debelle, Lisa Hannigan, The Horrors, Led Bib and The Invisible. The awards will be on BBC Two tonight (Tuesday 8th Sept 2009) from 10 pm.