Real Magic Music with Hayden Thorpe

Singing songs from Ness

Presented by: Real Magic Books

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0	WENDOVER: Real Magic Books
P	Saturday 19th October, 2024
N	5:00pm

Event information

Hayden Thorpe is best known as the former frontman and chief songwriter for the much-loved band Wild Beasts. He returns to the stage with his beautifully singular third album Ness, made in collaboration with best-selling nature writer Robert Macfarlane.

Using a process of redaction, Thorpe brings songs to life from the pages of best-selling author Robert Macfarlane’s book of the same name. Ness is inspired by Suffolk’s Orford Ness, the former Ministry of Defence weapons development site during both World Wars and the Cold War. Acquired by the National Trust in 1993 and left to re-wild, it to this day remains a place of paradox, mystery and constant evolution. Thorpe’s Ness is an ode to Orford Ness, the physical place and the book it inspired, both featuring the words of Robert Macfarlane and the artwork of Stanley Donwood.

Thorpe first encountered Macfarlane’s work via a copy of his 2012 book Landmarks which then led him to Ness, Macfarlane’s 2018 collaboration with Stanley Donwood. “He writes about non-human forms in a way that captures an essence that, as humans, we can understand,” Thorpe enthuses. After the pair met and then collaborated at the Kendal Mountain Literature Festival, the idea developed that Thorpe make an album from Macfarlane’s prose. His copy of the book is now covered in black ink, covering words, lines and sentences, to "reveal the song underneath".

Talking about working with Macfarlane, Hayden said: “I feel like I’m getting to work with Dylan Thomas or James Joyce whose sing-song prose is only ever a melody away from music. Rob is an extremely generous collaborator, which likely explains the impressive cannon of music he has been involved in. After hearing the sketches, he empowered me with free rein over the words.”