* A cult icon, with a devoted following, it’s no surprise Nick Mulvey is also up for music’s most prestigious prize. Again.His previous act, the jazzy Portico Quartet achieved global prominence when they were nominated for the 2008 Mercury Prize.Now he is up for another — this time under his own steam, with his top ten solo debut, First Mind.

“I’m over the moon to be nominated for this Mercury Prize,” he says. “I put my whole being into making First Mind and this acknowledgement is a sweet reward.” Hailed as a triumph of melody and groove, the experimental masterpiece showcases this skills as a virtuoso acoustic guitarist — displaying the guitar-picking technique he learnt in the Cuban capital, Havana. But it also portrays an experimental singer-songwriter who has won over crowds across the world, and at home everywhere from the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury to Bestival. It’s incredible to think that last time we saw him in Oxford, in March, it was in the intimate setting of The Art Bar — still better known as The Bullingdon.

This time he steps up a rung to the main room at the O2 Oxford, though it is still a modest space for an artist at the top of his game. “My playing is all about lines, not strumming chords,” he says. “It’s about having motion and rhythm and groove. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it has to be animated. Singer-songwriter stuff, Philip Glass — it’s all in there.” Which is probably why he has garnered so much respect — not least from Mercury Prize victors Alt-J, who quoted Portico’s debut album Knee Deep In The North Sea in their own jazzy Dissolve Me. Still, having landed a Mercury nomination of their own (alongside Elbow, Radiohead and Adele, no less), most artists would stick with their band, and their winning formula.

Nick admits he didn’t rush into his new acoustic freedom, hiding away from other musicians and leaving a decent gap before releasing his own The Fever To The Form solo EP in 2013. “All I wanted to do was play my instrument every day, to be in a room on my own and study my heroes.” he says. And they include Nick Drake. “He’s the main dude for me,” he adds. “It’s a reductionist thing, this boiled down music”. But while it may look like a fresh start, Nick insists there’s continuity in his art. “Even though there’s a surface-level difference between my music then and now, it’s all the same to me,” he says. “I do the same things on the guitar that I did on the ‘hang’ [the Swiss percussion instrument he played with Portico]. “It’s about repetition, hypnotic music... and the groove.”

Nick Mulvey plays the O2 Academy Oxford, this Sunday. Tickets £12.50 ticketweb.co.uk