Guests and nominees had already started to arrive at the London venue including Sam Fender and Little Simz who had been rehearsing their performances. The show was scheduled to be screened on BBC Four, however, the BBC’s regular programming was interrupted to focus on the declining health of Queen Elizabeth. The organisers had already axed the red carpet segment of the event and they were moments away from opening the show, until being forced to postpone as a mark of respect.“Tonights Mercury Prize event has been postponed at this time of great national sorrow. We know everyone involved in the Mercury Prize will understand,” the organisers said in a statement.

The nominees for this year’s Mercury Prize also included Self Esteem, Wet Leg, Harry Styles and Gwenno. Harry Styles was nominated for his critically acclaimed third solo album but was not due to attend as he is currently on tour in America. The ceremony was set to include performances from Jessie Buckley, Wet Leg, Nova Twins and bookies’ favourite to win, Self Esteem.  

If anyone near the Hammersmith Apollo can collect hot food and blast chill it please reply or dm me for more info. The other food has been hooked up with the local church. Pls rt.

— Rebecca Lucy Taylor (@SELFESTEEM___) September 8, 2022

Self Esteem, real name Rebecca Taylor, had arrived at the event before the postponement was announced. Upon hearing the show would not be going ahead, she took to Twitter to seek help in donating the food and drink that had been prepared for the event. “If anyone near the Hammersmith Apollo can collect hot food and blast chill it please reply or dm me for more info. The other food has been hooked up with the local church. Pls rt.” she wrote. After much sharing, Under One Sky and Punjabi 1946 came in to freeze the food and distribute it to those who need it. “Ok we did it!!” she Tweeted, “@amritmaanldn is picking it up and getting it in a freezer to be distributed tomorrow!!! Thanks Jackie Joseph for your help. And thanks Twitter for the rts! Everyone hit up Amrit’s restaurant in cov garden asap. Love you all.”

The BBC Proms were also set to begin at 7.30 pm yesterday. With the announcement of the Queen’s death an hour earlier, they too decided to cancel as a mark of respect.

Having grown up with a Welsh-speaking Mum and a Cornish speaking Dad, Gwenno is fluent in both languages. It’s something that came to the fore in her 2018 album Le Kov, which was sung entirely in Cornish. That continues to be the case here, with the Mên-an-Tol standing stones in Cornwall being the inspiration behind this song.

Gwenno explains that “I was inspired by Ithell Colquhoun’s ‘The Living Stones’ as well as the eternal nature of these ancient monuments and how they enable us to reflect on our own nature as human beings and on our relationship to the landscape …. I wanted to share a different and quieter side to the record, one that is grounded in … ambient Celtic music, film scores, and experimental electronic music …. I hope that this collection of songs will serve as a small and helpful reminder of how powerful the sound of gentleness and beauty is.“

Tresor
01.07.22
to pre-order https://t.co/0llNFZ3wj4 pic.twitter.com/ViAWX4cbQU

— G W E N N O (@gwennosaunders) March 2, 2022

The album was written before the lockdown and completed in Gwenno’s Cardiff home with Rhys Edwards producing, and its release will be accompanied by a short film made by Gwenno and filmmaker Clare Marie Bailey. The record’s promised to be “an introspective focus on home and self, a prescient work echoing the isolation and retreat that has been a central, global shared experience over the past two years.“

If you’re interested in hearing for yourself what new stuff she’s been up to, you can pre-order the album at this link. As for seeing her live, you can look for tickets here and see some upcoming UK dates below.

Gwenno UK Tour Dates

04/30/2022 – Stag and Dagger – Edinburgh
01/05 – Various Venues – Glasgow
05/05 – Central Live Music Venue – Wrexham
03/06 – In it Together – Port Talbot
03/09 – O2 Ritz Manchester – Manchester
17/09 – O2 Academy Leicester – Leicester

The new adaptation of Spectators of Suicide will be the third interpretation of the song released by the Blackwood band. The original Heavenly Recordings version of the track was released as a B-side on their seminal 1991 single You Love Us (as well as the 2003 rarities compilation Lipstick Traces – A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers). A more ethereal, slowed-down version of the track then became a much-loved album track on the band’s masterful 1992 debut LP Generation Terrorists released on Columbia Records. The new rendition maintains the towering sonic feel of the Columbia version, blended with the faster tempo of the Heavenly original.

Massive thanks to @BBCRadMac for feat my @heavenlyrecs book on today’s + @Manics & @gwennosaunders exclusive new recording of Spectators of Suicide (listen from 1hr 45 mins in). Pictured here: Nicky’s handwritten lyrics for 2008’s Forever Heavenly gigs. https://t.co/lLi54Opkra pic.twitter.com/OnU05Bnu6b

— Robin Turner (@robinturner) November 7, 2020

Manics frontman James Dean Bradfield, Gwenno and Beth Orton are among those who have contributed to Robin Turner’s new book on the history of the Heavenly label, Believe In Magic: Heavenly Recordings, The First Thirty Years. The book, which is published tomorrow, promises to “capture the presiding personality of the label, its bands and the people associated with its story.”

Speaking ahead of the new release of the new book and the 30th anniversary, Manics’ bassist and wordsmith Nicky Wire said of Heavenly: “I feel very grateful and properly proud to have played a small part in this incredible story. MAGIC-FAITH-AESTHETICS. That to me is what Heavenly stands for.” Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh is also quoted on the label’s website saying “Heavenly is more than a record label, it’s the absolute nectar of all that’s brilliant in the culture of these islands. I love the shit out of them and everything they stand for.”

2021 looks set to be a big Manic Street Preachers year, with two epic sold-out shows in Cardiff in support of the NHS (re-scheduled from December due to Covid-19 restrictions) and a highly-anticipated (as-yet-unnamed) new album. James Dean Bradfield told Radio X that the locked-down months of 2020 had enabled the band to get stuck into song-writing, but was clear that the new material would not reference the ongoing pandemic. He said “We’re trying to make sure that we’re not writing about the situation too much. It would feel like it was adding insult to injury.”

2020 saw James Dean Bradfield release an acclaimed album of his own –  the Victor Jara-inspired Even In Exile – his second solo outing, coming fourteen years after the underrated gem The Great Western. Nicky Wire has also been at work on solo material. Bradfield, who will play guitar on the upcoming Wire solo effort (Wire’s first since 2006’s I Killed The Zeitgest), told the NME that his bandmate’s new recordings are “sounding great.” He said of their sessions in the studio: “There was one song on there that was fucking amazing but hard to describe. It was very modern, very electronic, and very soothsaying and prophetic.”

The Manics’ Spectators of Suicide collaborator Gwenno (aka Gwenno Saunders), who has released albums in the Welsh and Cornish languages via Heavenly, has also been busy at work in 2020. Most recently she teamed up with Paul Weller on a remix of his track Old Father Tyme and produced a new theme tune for the popular The Cinematologists podcast. The Guardian described it as “an instrumental theme for a podcast that’s better than most other artists’ entire back catalogues.”