Hayden Thorpe – Doom Orchid

Hayden Thorpe delves into the mysteries of Orford Ness with “Doom Orchid,” a track that further unravels the nuclear-haunted landscape he explored on last year’s Ness. The song emerges from the shadow of this former atomic weapons testing site in Suffolk, where the ghosts of the Cold War still whisper through abandoned bunkers.

The inspiration struck Thorpe during a performance at the site, where he found himself contemplating a decommissioned nuclear missile. “I came to see the missile as a strange phallic totem,” he reflects, “Not a fertility symbol but the inverse of that—a ridiculous hyper-macho amulet of death.” This image crystallizes the song’s central tension between creation and destruction, beauty and menace.

“Doom Orchid” maintains Ness’s ethereal quality while threading through darker territory. Thorpe’s arrangements hover like fog over marshland, creating an atmosphere as unsettling as it is mesmerizing—a sonic mirror of Orford Ness itself.

Accompanying the release is Listen to Ness: In Conversation with Robert MacFarlane, a deep dive into the creative process behind Ness with his collaborator. MacFarlane’s written meditations on the site provided fertile ground for Thorpe’s musical explorations, and their dialogue illuminates how this peculiar landscape shaped both their artistic visions.