Watch: James Dean Bradfield performs a special version of Manics’ classic

Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield has performed a special version of one of the band’s classic songs – in a shipping container.

The musician was filmed in the Under Neon Loneliness art installation in Cardiff city centre performing Motorcycle Emptiness – the song which inspired the artwork

Earlier this month we had the honour of James Dean Bradfield paying a visit to ‘Under Neon Loneliness’, where he performed an acoustic rendition of the classic @Manics ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ for us.

Thank you for the support. 🙏🏻@CdiffMusicCity pic.twitter.com/OTAze4GOIh

— MarkJames_Works (@MarkJamesWorks) November 1, 2024

Last month the mysterious black shipping container with the glowing words ‘Under Neon Loneliness’ appeared outside Cardiff Central railway station.

For many, those three words conjure the lyrics of Manic Street Preachers’ iconic 1992 hit, ‘Motorcycle Emptiness,’ others may know them as the title of a Patrick Jones poem, but for Mark James, the artist behind the installation, which appeared overnight as part of Cardiff Music City Festival – they also transported him all the way to Japan.

“When you’re travelling with work,” something Mark has done frequently over a career that has seen him design over 100 record sleeves and work with artists such as Queen, Maximo Park, DJ Shadow, Karl Hyde and Amy Winehouse, as well as being a long-time collaborator with Gruff Rhys and Super Furry Animals, “there’s a point where you go and you’ve had some food, and you’ve got two or three hours to kill before you go to bed, and you just end up wandering around on your own.

“I was in Tokyo earlier this year and it just causes that feeling of being Under Neon Loneliness. You’ve got these really tall skyscrapers and the neon signs go all the way up the side. Each one is a different bar, a restaurant, a shop – you can have fourteen floors of different things going on.”

With a looped soundtrack of field recordings made in Tokyo and mixed by Cian Ciaran (Super Furry Animals, Das Koolies), clever use of mirrors, and eighteen uniquely created neon signs advertising made-up bars, restaurants and clubs, Under Neon Loneliness creates what Mark describes as “the feeling of stepping into another world, but it’s a foreign world and it’s almost overwhelming – the same feeling I think the Manics were getting at in the song – and you look up and it’s almost infinite and you just go, oh my god!”

Under Neon Loneliness, which is part-funded by FOR Cardiff, was on display in Cardiff’s Central Square, until the end of Cardiff Music City Festival – which saw such music icons as Ms. Lauryn Hill and The Fugees and Leftfield and Orbital performing in the Welsh capital.

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