Wolf Alice, Young Fathers, Jungle and FKA twigs were amongst the winners at The Association of Independent Music Awards this year, who celebrated another triumphant year for independent music last night at the fifth annual ceremony.
Hosted by XFM’s long term champion of new music John Kennedy and BBC Radio 1‘s Alice Levine, the AIM Awards is now established as the premiere event in the independent sector’s diary. The celebrations were marked by live performances this year from Alvvays, who opened the show and continued the party when their label Transgressive Records picked up the coveted Independent Label of The Year award.
The ceremony was brought to a riotous close by rising grime star Stormzy. A genre very much on the agenda, with MC, producer, songwriter, DJ, and rapper Skepta honoured with the Outstanding Contribution To Music Award. The Tottenham-raised Londoner behind the Boy Better Know collective and one of the grime scene’s most active and forward thinking voices was rightly celebrated for a career spanning over 10 years.
You can see the full list of winners below.
AIM 2015 INDEPENDENT MUSIC AWARDS WINNERS:
Best Small Label (in association with Disc Manufacturing Services)
Erased Tape Records
Best Difficult Second Album (in association with XFM)
Young Fathers – ‘White Men Are Black Men Too’
Special Catalogue Release of the Year (in association with Amazon Music)
Cities of Darkscorch Boardgame
Hardest Working Band or Artist
Swans
Golden Welly Award for Best Independent Festival (in association with AIF, voted for by readers of DIY)
Brainchild Festival
Independent Breakthrough of the Year
Wolf Alice
Indie Champion (in association with CI)
Marc Riley, BBC 6 Music
Independent Video of the Year (in association with Vevo)
Flying Lotus – ‘Never Catch Me’
Best Live Act (in association with Jack Daniel’s, voted for by visitors to Songkick)
All Time Low
Independent Track of the Year (in association with Spotify)
FKA Twigs – ‘Two Weeks’
PPL Award for Most Played New Independent Act
Jungle
Independent Album of the Year (in association with dotFans)
Enter Shikari – ‘The Mindsweep’
Independent Label of the Year (in association with Believe Digital)
Transgressive Records
Pioneer Award (in association with The Orchard)
Digby Pearson, Earache Records
Innovator Award (in association with Promostream)
Peter Quicke, Matt Black and Jonathan More of Ninja Tune
Outstanding Contribution to Music (in association with Merlin)
Skepta