6 QUESTIONS WITH HAYDEN THORPE

1 July 2025

Hayden Thorpe came to prominence as the lead singer and chief songwriter for the much-celebrated band Wild Beasts who released five acclaimed albums on Domino Records before disbanding.

September 2024 saw the release of his solo album Ness, an album of rare ambition and singular beauty made in collaboration with best-selling nature writer Robert Macfarlane. Known for his distinctive voice and sultry compositions, Thorpe’s return to Cumbria marks a new era for his craft reflective of the natural environment he lives surrounded by.

Ahead of their Campfire Club show with us at Cody Dock on 4th July, we had six questions for them…

For those that don’t know, can you describe your style of music?

“My Ness album, which I’ll be playing at Campfire Club sounds like Morricone making songs about the English Atomic Seaside. It’s a soulful and surrealist collection. I lend my voice to Robert Macfarlane’s prophetic words and use my baritone guitar as a frame to hang it all off. I think of the work almost an opera, but one more suited to campfires than chandeliers.”

Can you tell us about your latest album Ness and the collaboration with Robert Macfarlane?

“I wrote to Robert Macfarlane to tell him that his work meant a lot to me. Rob wrote back very open heartedly and we agreed to collaborate on a musical adaption of his epic poem Ness which is published alongside etchings from the legendary illustrator Stanley Donwood.

Ness is about Orford Ness, an ex-ministry of defence weapons development site situated on a shingle spit off Suffolk. It is where the MOD basically developed modern warfare, including atomic weapons development. The National Trust have been overseeing it’s re-wilding since 1993. All the curious and crooked histories of the place make for a compelling sonic landscape. Where there is wrongdoing and redemption, there is a story to be told and a song to be sung.

The backdrop of current horrors unto which the work has existed has only instilled a sense of urgency and poignancy to the project.”

What are some of the biggest influences in your songwriting with your solo project?

“Curiously enough, I would regard Robert Macfarlane as being one. When I first read his book Landmarks, long before any sense of Ness, I had a sense of wanting to make music that sounded like his words made me feel. I didn’t expect to be quite so direct about it.

Musically I’m always drawn to Kate Bush as standard bearer for vision and execution. Talk Talk are undeniably a strong guiding light in terms of feel and process. As I mentioned earlier, the spaghetti western music of Morricone has become an influence on the approach to place-music that I took for Ness.”