Hayden Thorpe has released new single ‘Doom Orchid’ ahead of his UK headline tour

Hayden Thorpe has shared a new track titled ‘Doom Orchid’, following the release of his third studio album ‘Ness’ last year. The song continues to explore themes surrounding Suffolk’s Orford Ness and its history of atomic weapon research.

“Performing the album at Orford Ness beside a nuclear missile had a profound effect on me. I came to see the missile as strange phallic totem, not a fertility symbol but the inverse of that, a ridiculous hyper-macho amulet of death. Doom Orchid explores our very human dark urges and how our destructive impulses and our libidinous wants must agonisingly co-exist. It’s a love letter to Ness, but perhaps the sort of letter that reveals a little too much,” Thorpe explains.

Alongside the new track, Thorpe has released ‘Listen To Ness: In Conversation with Robert MacFarlane’, a long-form recording discussing the project’s origins and development with his collaborator.

‘Ness’ draws inspiration from Orford Ness, a ten-mile long shingle spit on the Suffolk coast. The former Ministry of Defence site, active during both World Wars and the Cold War, was acquired by the National Trust in 1993. The album features songs created through a process of redaction, using words from MacFarlane’s book of the same name.

His upcoming dates read:

JANUARY
25 Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
26 Celtic Connections @ City Halls Recital Room, Glasgow
28 Music Room, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
29 National Centre For Early Music, York
30 Sage 2, The Glasshouse International Centre For Music, Gateshead
31 The Gate, Cardiff

FEBRUARY
1 The Lantern, Bristol Beacon, Bristol
2 Blackwell Performance Space, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Birmingham
4 Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich
5 Komedia, Brighton
6 Storey’s Field Centre, Cambridge
7 Kings Place, London

APRIL
12 L’Archipel, Paris
13 Effenaar, Eindhoven
15 Haldern Pop Bar, Rees
16 Jaki, Cologne
17 Baketown, Berlin
18 Trafo, Jena
19 Feinkost Lampe, Hanover

MAY
7 Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival @ The Deer’s Head, Belfast
8 The Grand Social, Dublin
9 St Michael’s Church, Manchester