Hayden Thorpe shares new single "He" + announces London show with Robert Macfarlane

Hayden Thorpe

Releases new single “He” – watch video here
Announces London show with Robert Macfarlane for February 2025 + other events
New album Ness set for September 27th

Orford Ness, a ten-mile long shingle spit on the coast of Suffolk, is a place of paradox, mystery and constant evolution. Where wind, waves and birdlife make their own music, it’s now joined on Hayden Thorpe’s forthcoming album Ness by his human voice singing words written by pioneering, best-selling place writer Robert Macfarlane.
 
Having previously shared “They” from Ness – due Sept 27th, today, Thorpe shares “He”. Like nearly all the songs on the album, “He” is resplendent with bold orchestration and choral backing as Hayden’s vocals sweep the song forward: "I hold those instruments in a higher esteem than I do rock instruments,” Thorpe says, “the clarinet is very much a voice, I felt I was almost duetting with it.”
 
Watch the video for “He” here.
Stream “He” here.
 
The video for “He” is directed by Sam Potter and features much of the flora and fauna native to Ness. The concept for the piece jumps off from the uniquely dark history of Orford Ness, where high-speed photography was invented to film missiles being launched. Potter’s bold response sees the creation of a high-speed flicker book – a mesmeric work of art that bombards the senses with a “hyper-nature.”
 
Hayden says of the new single: “I loved the swagger and strut of Rob’s lines in the He chapter, they immediately brought to mind the cock-sure attitude of a Rolling Stones track. I went about creating a jaunty let-it-all-hang-out sort of song. It’s a maximalist approach - the more I gave it, the greedier it got. Production wise this was probably the biggest undertaking. You know things have gotten broad when you’re miking up a sackbut (a 15th century early trombone) and a spinet (a small 17th century harpsichord). It was a lot of fun working with Propellor’s brass section and the recording became a crash course in studio engineering. The power and drama of orchestral waveforms rubbing up against modern sounds are a haunted house for the ear.
 
The track begins with a sample of Rob reading. I became really interested in that netherworld between word and song. Under Milk Wood and Ulysses both operate similarly - the lines are almost melodic. I wanted to reveal the innerworkings of that process.”

Single artwork

Suffolk’s Orford Ness is the former Ministry of Defence site during both World Wars and the Cold War, it was acquired by the National Trust in 1993 and left to re-wild. When Thorpe was last there, “you could see the moon all day, which heightened the interplanetary feel of the Ness,” he says. This otherworldliness comes not just from this ultra-rare habitat, but what people did within it, a tension that forms the heart of his remarkable third record under his own name.

 
The unexpected is in the nature of Ness. In the early twentieth century, its remote coastal location made it the ideal location for top-secret military research and testing, from bombs and missiles to the components for Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Huge concrete pagodas, designed to collapse in the event of an accidental explosion, loom over shingle strewn with rusted steel and crumbling buildings.
 
Hayden Thorpe’s Ness is also unexpected in its sound, with the lyrics taken from Macfarlane’s book, Thorpe delved further into the production side deeper than ever before and collaboration was key to the making of the record. The arrangements for brass, woodwind and orchestral bass drum were written by Jack McNeill of modern ensemble Propellor with choral arrangements by the award-winning Kerry Andrew. Elements of the Ness found themselves on the record too, such as seeds placed on the bass drum during recording, or thistles rubbed together for the sound of shakers or whirring.
 
Watch the video for "They” here.
 
Thorpe remarked on Ness in our current landscape: “It might be easy to think of this album as a less personal one, but my personhood was carried in Ness and in-turn, Ness in me. The same lifeforce that so possessed Robert Macfarlane to write the book carried forward like an electrical current. Ness is uniquely qualified to teach us of what has been and what can be. It is the place where weapons developers learnt how to train the sun’s energy onto those we disagree with. Today, amid new horrors and hostilities, Ness stands as a poignant reminder of those end-of-days-ways and the restorative powers of the natural world.”
 
Alongside the upcoming National Trust Ness Speaks Weekender happening at Orford Ness itself, Hayden Thorpe has announced a show at London’s King Place with Robert Macfarlane for February. Thorpe will also play the inaugural Equinox festival by Earth / Percent at Wasing.
 
Upcoming live dates
20th - 22nd September – Earth / Percent presents Equinox @ Wasing, West Berkshire Tickets
Saturday 28th September - Ness Speaks: Words and Music, Orford Ness, Suffolk Tickets
Sunday 29th September - Ness Speaks: Words and Music, Orford Ness, Suffolk Tickets
Friday 7th February – Kings Place, London Tickets
 
Ness is available to pre-order on exclusive black Biovinyl (with hand-numbered A4 lyric sheet signed by Hayden Thorpe and Robert Macfarlane), standard black Biovinyl, CD (in partially recycled jewel case) and digitally. Pre-order: Dom Mart | Digital
 
Hayden Thorpe Online
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