Foto © Juliet Klottrup
Hayden Thorpe hat sein zweites Album Moondust For My Diamond veröffentlicht. Wir sprachen via Zoom mit ihm über den philosophischen Hintergrund seiner Platte und Musik als Therapie.
Your new album Moondust For My Diamond is coming up and to quote “it oozes big cosmic energy”. Tell me more about this inspiration.
I began to wonder as an artist why we value things in life often by metric and why so much depends on economics. I wanted to create spirituals for the data age, things that can’t be quantified. What about the beauty of the unknown, the chaotic universe? That was the thought behind the album.
What does the title moondust for my diamond exactly mean?
The diamond is your most precious offering, earth’s most beautiful manifestation. Music, like a diamond, comes about under pressure, chemistry and time. My diamond is my highest value offering. Diamonds tell a story and you’rebewitched by it. Moondust is kind of the myth of yourself, creating this diamond.
So, is your diamond your music and voice?
Yeah my music, my love, spirit. It’s my most extraordinary self.
Are you a religious or spiritual person?
No, I’m not. But I’m very much a believer. The things that we decide to believe shape our life. We are fortunate that we live in a safe society and we can choose which things to believe in. I choose a bit of yoga, little christianity and rock n roll. I mean, today We kind of create our own god.
Your previous album Diviner focused more on the inner self and sounded a lot darker. Would you say Moondust is now the opposite of that work and a more lighter version of yourself?
Yeah, with Diviner I got to explore the sadness of the time, there was a lot of change at that time. I felt lucky to do so because in today’s societies sadness is often treated as to be fixed. I metabolized it and finally I said: let’s explore the light.
Is music therapy for yourself?
Yeah absolutely, singing stimulates you and it’s therapeutic. I think, it’s a fortunate thing to be able to do . Writing music is the ultimate optimistic act, you’re looking forward to a quest into the unknown. That’s why you have to be optimistic.
You said, you want people to feel the album before they know it. With what feelings should listeners associate your album in the ideal case?
I want it to feel like body music. It was very meditative. I was into yoga, breath work and stuff and very interested in how certain body moves have an influence on you. I wanted to create my own version of that.
The lyrics on the album came out of improvisation and meditation, as well as long remote journeys into the Lake District mountains. Tell me about this process.
Well we assume nature is there to be dominated and I thought, what if writing was kind of a collecting process, if words were already there? It took patience to sit back and allow the words to come out. I thought, if I just sing the songs, maybe my mouth and teeth will just shape words and everything will come together.
You also contributed to Wavepaths, which combines music and psychedelic therapy. How does that work exactly?
I read a book called how to change your mind which is about the potential of psychedelics. I came across Wavepaths who are creating a database of sounds while someone is going through psychedelic therapy. I sang to that while they were in a different state of consciousness. So yeah it had an influence on my current album.
It’s great that music can contribute to healing. It’s such an important cultural element.
Absolutely. I think it’s a natural phenomenon, a pattern of vibrations. We create it with our high conciseness, it’s a miracle of our processing power. You just feel it, it converts the head to the heart.
One song I like very much is metafeeling. What does it mean for you?
On a basic feeling, it’s the way I’m feeling. You find yourself within yourself like hey, maybe how I’m feeling isn’t how I’m really feeling. We believe in our feelings as our own truth, so we are kind of trapped. For example, I’m a control freak. Having control is often praised as a virtue but sometimes it’s not good to feel that way. The song is about this realization.
How would you describe your development as a musician from being 13 years in Wild Beasts to now a solo artist?
Well, I can’t claim to always know what I’m doing to be honest or to be better or worse. I always felt that there isn’t enough lifetime to capture what I want to capture. So there’s never enough time. Sometimes I think, I will never have again what I had in my 20s. But then I’m thinking, ok now I can do some things I couldn’t do before.
When I listen to your music, either it’s with Wild Beasts or your solo albums, I like that it is very sensual, dreamy and often kind of longing. Would you say that it is this essence or similar traits that can be found in all of your music?
I’m not a trained musician, it was always a matter of the heart, it’s a desire. That probably translates into my work. I do find music very sensual and adrenal, it is of the sex organs. I’m very interested in the chakras. So I like to make music in this field.
