Kai Reesu win the 2025 SAY Award

The great and good of Scotland’s music scene gathered tonight (6 Nov) in Dundee to celebrate the biggest prize in Scottish music: the Scottish Album of the Year Award. Taking place for the first time at Dundee’s Caird Hall, The SAY Award went to Glasgow-based jazz/hip-hop outfit Kai Reesu for their debut record, the mixtape titled KOMPROMAT vol.i.

It’s a brilliant choice from The SAY Award judges, who plumped for Kai Reesu’s mixtape over albums from Brooke Combe, Cloth, Hamish Hawk, Jacob Alon, Matt Carmichael, TAAHLIAH, The Joy Hotel, Zoe Graham and Kathryn Joseph.

For those uninitiated, Kai Reesu features Paul Copeland on keys, Matt Sim on drums, Robert McArthur on guitar and bass, plus saxophonists Harry Weir and Michael Butcher and incomparable rapper Jurnalist. Their sound is inspired by video game music, hip-hop beats and 70s jazz fusion, and KOMPROMAT vol.i is one of the boldest records to come out of Scotland this year. When we spoke to members of Kai Reesu for our Spotlight On… column back in August, they filled us in on their aims with the mixtape.

“KOMPROMAT is, in a sense, about embracing process and exploration – which is why the mixtape format works so well for the release,” Copeland told us. “At the core, it's a descriptor of our collaboration with Jurnalist, which came together from old beats and old bars. Some of the tunes are Jurnalist’s bars, met descriptively with Kai Reesu instrumentals to solidify a sense of form, and others are Jurnalist meeting the instrumentals with certain bars. This is patterned with beats we made together, completely fresh.” An example of this collaborative approach can be found on KOMPROMAT vol.i final song, Remember / Alvvays svnny. “[That came from] a beat that Matt, Robert and I have been playing together since we first met, and an old tune of Jurnalist’s, about touring and coming up as a musician in a difficult musical landscape," explains Copeland. "I think it's quite poetic and encapsulates the project.”

Alan Morrison, Head of Music at Creative Scotland, was full of praise for Kai Reesu and their winning album. “Jazz and hip-hop are arguably the most inventive scenes in Scottish music at the moment, and they combine magnificently in Kai Reesu’s dynamic debut album,” says Morrison. “Like the band itself, this is an album that brings an international lyrical perspective to a home-grown groove. And the exciting thing is, as the name says, this is just vol. 1.”

Kai Reesu join past SAY Award winners rEDOLENT (dinny greet, 2024), Young Fathers (Heavy Heavy, 2023), Fergus McCreadie (Forest Floor, 2022), Mogwai (As The Love Continues, 2021), Nova (Re-Up, (2020), Auntie Flo (Radio Highlife, 2019), Young Fathers (Cocoa Sugar, 2018), Sacred Paws (Strike a Match, 2017), Anna Meredith (Varmints, 2016), Kathryn Joseph (Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled, 2015), Young Fathers (Tape Two, 2014), RM Hubbert (Thirteen Lost & Found, 2013) and the inaugural winner Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat (Everything’s Getting Older, 2012).

Modern Scottish Classic Award & Sound of Young Scotland Award

KT Tunstall. Image courtesy of the SAY Award

The SAY Award wasn’t the only one to be handed out tonight. Also receiving a prize was KT Tunstall, who was honoured with the Modern Scottish Classic Award for her 2004 debut Eye to the Telescope, and she performed three songs from it at the ceremony: hits Black Horse and the Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See, as well as the album's title track. Tunstall joins previous Modern Scottish Classic Award winners Paolo Nutini for These Streets, Cocteau Twins for Heaven or Las Vegas, and Frightened Rabbit for The Midnight Organ Fight.

The other award given out tonight was The Sound of Young Scotland Award, which went to Glasgow singer-songwriter Alice Faye. When we spoke to Faye two years ago as part of our Spotlight On… series, she laid out some of her influences. “I’d definitely say a lot of artists from the 1930s and 50s... Judy Garland and Edith Piaf would be some of my main influences vocally, as well as a cheeky dash of Roy Orbison. And songwriting-wise, I’ve always felt very attached to more modern artists like Rufus Wainwright and ABBA, since I listened to them from quite young. I’ve always loved their theatricality and unnecessary drama. It’s just so fabulously camp. Someone not replying to your call should require a full orchestra’s response, that’s how I see it!”

Faye's prize includes a funding package worth up to £10,000 to support her in the creation of her debut album.

Robert Kilpatrick, the CEO and Creative Director of the Scottish Music Industry Association, who run the awards, points out the huge importance of the monetary value of these prizes in today's climate for music making. “After tonight, The SAY Award will have distributed over £425,000 in prize money. It’s a powerful statement about the value that Scotland places on music – and on the album as an art-form – in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and metrics.”