Earlier this year we shared the list of contenders for this year’s Jovian Bow Shock Prize, the alternative to the mind-numbingly dull list of albums offered up by the annual Mercury Music Prize. Now we can announce that the winner of that prize is Richard Dawson with his album Nothing Important. To win the prize, he has beaten off strong competition from Gazelle Twin, Call Super, Jam City, Laura Cannell, Jane Weaver and more to come out victorious.
To coincide with Dawson’s win, above you can check out ‘The Smudging Ritual’, a portrait of Richard Dawson’s recent tour of the UK in support of the album. Across 18 minutes, the video captures Dawson in interview and live, offering an insight into touring life and the album itself, focusing on the inspirations behind Nothing Important and Dawson’s songwriting process.
Of the album itself, our editor John Doran had the following to say: "Drawing on such diverse musical influences as devotional sufi music, West African guitar pop, Derek Bailey and Bill Orcutt, musically speaking, Richard Dawson is that rarest of things – a genuine future-facing outlier in the old and well established form of English folk. As a lyricist he displays a true and unnerving originality, conjuring up visions that are both apocalyptic and heart warming; hilarious and terrifying; alien and immediately recognisable; all the while shattering traditional narrative structures and rebuilding them like a literary giant. He is proving to be the kind of musician who only comes along once in a generation." Read our interview with Richard Dawson from earlier this year here.
