THE SAY Award is Scotland's national music prize which celebrates, promotes and rewards the most outstanding album releases of the year.

It sets out to place artistic merit before sales history, genre or record label affiliation.

The Scottish Album of the Year Award, could easily be described as Scotland's Mercury Prize.

Previous winners have included Young Fathers, Sacred Paws, Anna Meredith and Kathryn Joseph.

Now in its eighth year, the Scottish Album of the Year for 2019 has been open to any band or artist - and the hundreds on the qualifying Eligible Albums list include those who have self-released using platforms such as Bandcamp, and cover a multitude of genres from classical, jazz, traditional Scottish and folk to hip hop, rock, electronic, indie, dance and sometimes a combination of some of those.

The Eligible Albums have all been released between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019 and there has was no listing fee to submit an album for consideration.

Some 100 impartial nominators, including myself, have been picking their favourites to reduce the hundreds down to a Longlist of 20 which will be announced on July 26.

These are the albums that floated my boat on the extensive SAY list this year, and got my vote, with some very honourable mentions.

5. Zoë Bestel - Transcience

This south of Scotland-based singer songwriter hasn’t stopped since picking up her trusty ukulele eight years ago at the age of just 13.

The greatest compliment you can pay this dark and challenging album which combines folk with elements of jazz is that you would not know this was 'just' a ukelele album.   A world aware from George Formby.  It is that spine-tingling voice that takes this haunting, spectacular collection, which includes a melodic teardrop of a song about the airstrikes in Syria, onto another plain.

Four songs from this album ended up in our end of year Top 100 Tunes from Scotland last year.

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2018 

4. Mogwai - Kin

After over 23 years Glasgow's finest whose music has become synonymous with the term 'post-rock' produced their first proper feature film score and it allowed them to escaped the confines of guitars to further experiment with harmony, noise and shifting atmospheres with an enthralling orchestral soundscape.

This is Stuart Braithwaite and co in cinemascope.

That's not to say it is all mood music. The closer We're Not Done is another surprise, a soaring playlister of an anthem that would hook the unconverted.

READ MORE: Expect the unexpected from Mogwai's enthralling Kin soundtrack

3. Fenella - A Gift From Midnight

Comprised of Glasgow-based vocalist Mairi Fenella Whittle and pianist/guitarist Jack Boyce, who bonded over a shared love of Elektra Records output, including Love, Nico and The Doors, the duo quietly produced a breathtaking debut album which fills a jazzy-bluesy-poppy-alternative space somewhere between Amy Winehouse, Billie Holliday, Lana Del Rey and Nancy Sinatra.

Early singles were released on Little Tiger Records, a label run by students from Riverside Music College in Busby.

2. Sophie - Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides

This inspired experimental Glasgow-born-and-raised now LA-based pop producer produced a scrape-the-stars debut album full of memorable tunes that are imaginatively hyper-glossy yet subvertively cutting edge in delivery and truly pushing the boundaries of where synth-based dance music can go.

Five songs from this album ended up in our end of year Top 100 Tunes from Scotland last year - the most from any one artist - and it richly deserved a Grammy nomination for best dance/electronic album.

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2018 

1. C Duncan - Health

Abandoning the DIY bedroom ethos to work more collaboratively might sound like the act of someone desperate to come up with new ideas. Not so.

What sets apart the 29-year-old Glasgow musician, who received a Mercury Prize nomination for his debut album Architect, is that nobody else sounds like him. At a time when the word 'original' is spouted around to describe jumped up karaoke singers, C Duncan's miriad of influences from classical and choral to The Carpenters, Talk Talk and the Cocteau Twins come together to create a harmony-infused tapestry of sound that could be copied, but nobody would dare.

On his inspired third album, he stretches his wings and adds a widescreen poppier feel to topics that cover grief, heartbreak, mental health issues, and sexuality. Infectious pop-inspired songs like Impossible and Talk, Talk, Talk are soon followed by his more familiar reflective muse, and for the first time he lays bare his soul. He Came From the Sun, for instance, muses on his own life and experience of coming out to emotional effect.

But quite simply, it is an album full of memorable hook-laden songs. And that in itself would be enough.

READ MORE:  C Duncan and his magnum opus

Very Honourable Mentions

Stillhound - Stillhound

Edinburgh-based Stillhound, consisting of Fergus Cook, Laurie Corlett-Donald and Dave Lloyd, set off into the Scottish Highlands, turning small cottages in to makeshift studios in Gairloch, Ardnamurchan, and Ullapool to produce their artfully crafted second album which reveals pointers to Four Tet, Panda Bear, Blue Nile and even Prefab Sprout.

Steg G - The Air In Between

The DJer, producer and mixer who has produced the beats for some of Scotland's earliest hip hop hits the spot with this album of politically-aware collaborations.

Youth Team - Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape

The third album from 27-year-old ambient electro whizz Angus Upton from Braemar he describes as a soundtrack to a movie that if it did exist "would have been directed by John Carpenter, starred Kurt Russell, made between 1982 and 1986 and well, you can figure the plot out".

Sweaty Palms - Quit Now

The Glasgow four-piece garage-punk combo tackle issues of mysogyny, austerity and lad culture with a skuzzy production, filthy reverb, 'simple is good' ethics, a Mark E Smith snarl and hooks to die for.

Steve Mason - About The Light

The ex-Beta Band front man Steve Mason comes back brighter with his fourth album.

Kathryn Joseph - From When I Wake The Want Is

The possessed Inverness-born singer-songwriter follows up her debut, a previous Scottish Album of the Year Award winner, with aplomb.

Foggy City Orphan - Cheer Up

A sonic blast of LCD Soundsystem-with-loud-guitars pretty much sums up the thrill of the Glasgow combo's latest album. 

Chris Tolley - Beneath The Surface

An engagingly cinematic ambient mainly synth and piano collection from the East Lothian film score composer which he says is "not the sunniest of listens as it deals with a family member's cancer diagnosis.  But hopefully it delivers on a few of the emotions that so many feel".

James Yorkston - The Route to the Harmonium

The wonder of the Cellardyke folk-influenced songwriter's latest album is how loud it can be with emotional depth, while understated in its delivery.

Aidan Moffat & RM Hubbert - Here Lies The Body

A bewitching soundtrack to an unshot movie about a chance encounter of two old flames as they enjoy hen and stag parties in Blackpool and exploring how their relationship evolves through family, fortune telling, deceit and death.

Chvrches - Love Is Dead

The relentless Glasgow synth-pop combo's third album is again brimming with big tunes which threaten to bother the pop charts, without really threatening to usurp Ed Sheeran, due to their knack of sounding just a smidgeon left field. Co-produced by Greg Kurstin, it marked first time the band worked with outside producers.

The Longlist of 20 will be whittled down to a Shortlist of 10 albums, one of which will be chosen by music fans through an online public vote and the others decided by The SAY Award judging panel.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony at The Assembly Rooms in the heart Edinburgh on September 6, with the winning artist collecting a £20,000 cash prize and nine runners up each awarded £1,000.

This is our SAY Award 2019 Spotify playlist.

And this is our SAY Award 2019 YouTube playlist.