Ill Manors Soundtrack and Album

The Ill Manors soundtrack album is produced by British songwriter Ben Drew, otherwise known as Plan B. The album was recorded in the Edge Recording Studio under the record label, Atlantic; and was then released on 23 July 2012. Also, unlike his film, Plan B decided not to direct his music video and left the directing to Yann Demange.

The Ill Manors soundtrack was written in response to the riots which happened across England in 2011, and was specifically Plan B’s ideology about society’s rejection towards youth and the failure to help and guide youth in the UK. The song both portrays and presents the causes and effects of the riots and how young people act in a response to society. This is also a reflection of what Plan B’s movie, Ill Manors, is about.
The music video features clips from the riots, clips of David Cameron, and other famous politicians; this helps portray that the people in charge of the UK are the reason for the corrupted youth, and that they are not acting to help young people.

In the promotion of his Ill Manors album Plan B had used a variety of techniques; he had performed live sessions on TV shows and performed in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.  The promotion was helped further as a free download of one of his songs was available for those who had signed up to the official mailing list. He had also held a launch party for his album in a secret location which was described as ‘a dungeon’ by other artists; the event was also cleverly available to stream live on YouTube, which is the one of the largest broadcasting platforms in the world, which in turn gave worldwide recognition of Plan B and his music for Ill Manors.

The average rating of the album was 4 stars; however The Telegraph had awarded the album 5 stars. At aggregate review website Metacritic awarded the album an average score of 83/100 which was based on the reviews of 14 professionals. The album was then nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize, becoming the first soundtrack album to be nominated. The album also came first in the UK albums chart of 2012, and was in the top 10 of Irish albums, and Australian albums.