| Prize | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Arto Lindsay |
| Cover: | Prize (album).jpg |
| Released: | 1999 |
| Label: | Righteous Babe |
| Producer: | Arto Lindsay, Melvin Gibbs, Andres Levin |
| Prev Title: | Noon Chill |
| Prev Year: | 1997 |
| Next Title: | Ecomixes |
| Next Year: | 2000 |
Prize is an album by the American musician Arto Lindsay, released in 1999.[1] [2] Lindsay considered it an attempt at pop music; it is one of a number of his solo albums inspired by the Brazilian music he heard while growing up in the country.[3] [4] [5]
The album was produced by Lindsay, Melvin Gibbs, and Andres Levin. It was recorded in Bahia and New York.[6] Five of the songs are sung in Portuguese.[7] Vinicius Cantuaria and Skoota Warner contributed to the album; Beans rapped on "Prefeelings".[8] [9]
Robert Christgau stated that the songs float by "on the sinuous current and spring-fed babble of a Brazilian groove bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated by the latest avant-dance fads and electronic developments." The Riverfront Times wrote: "Sensuous and ripe, exotic and incandescent, Prize pulsates along rhythms whose headwaters are found in the airy heights of Brazilian tropicalia jazz."[7] Newsday thought that "the disc has the soft, understated swing of bossa nova—even Lindsay's occasionally skronk guitar doesn't much disturb its romantic patina."[10]
The Los Angeles Times noted that "this master alchemist likes to offset his love of lush, tropical music with sharp, modernist accents." The Orlando Sentinel determined that "Lindsay's slightly out-of-focus singing has a dreamy gentleness that helps unite the strikingly disparate elements on Prize ... the bossa nova and samba prove perfectly compatible with elements of avant-electronica and obstreperous art-rock." The Independent listed Prize as one of the 15 best pop albums of 1999.[11]
AllMusic wrote that "the drum'n'bass textures that lay on the surface of his last album like laminate are more fully integrated this time out: 'Prefeelings' combines a fractured breakbeat with salsa-fied acoustic guitar and saxophones."