After recently announcing his new album, Moondust For My Diamond, Hayden Thorpe today shares his new single, “Parallel Kingdom”.
As with the video for previous single, “The Universe Is Always Right” the video for “Parallel Kingdom” was shot in Hayden’s homeland of The Lake District, directed by Tom Haines. Hayden says “there are ancient stories to be told here, aeons play out in a single glance. Using Swinside Stone Circle as a location gave everything a certain sanctity.”
“Parallel Kingdom” sees Hayden continue his journey from the internal landscapes of Diviner out into visions of the spectacle around us. “So much of our existence is an inconceivable wonder yet we’re so distracted that we rarely register the immenseness of the moment. Right there, beside us all along, is the wonder of everything”, says Hayden on “Parallel Kingdom”. Sonically, the track is a shining example of the decades deep connection Hayden has with producer, Richard Formby. The two worked on a bassline Hayden had written years previous, running it through Formby’s monolithic self-built modular synthesiser to create the driving, rapturous version it is today.
In contrast to Diviner, a critically acclaimed album steeped in solitude and fragility, Moondust For My Diamond moves into a more natural visual and sonic palette. He’s interested in, he says, “the meeting point between science and religion, the grand struggle for reality that shapes so much of our time.” Thorpe has made an album that is galvanizing, reassuring, elegant, seductive: it oozes Big Cosmic Energy.
“What about nature? What about the cosmos? What about all these things that break through the tyranny of the self? Our sense organs bring the world inside of us after all, I just had to sing it back out. I was enchanted again with the mystery of science and how I might speak from the heart in an age where metric is gospel.” Moondust… comes as the by-product of a coping mechanism: exploring the worlds of digital mysticism, and the need to melt down reality and recast it when so much feels so unreal.
The pastoral evolution of last year’s Aerial Songs EP hinted at an expanding palette that reflected Thorpe’s return to The Lake District, the natural environment he grew up surrounded by. These additional influences seep into Moondust…, along with Hayden’s involvement with Wavepaths, a pioneering project integrating music into psychedelic therapy, plus ‘hybrid’ gigs and breath workshops with pioneering breath practitioner Richie Bostock. It’s those surrenders, experiments and collaborations that make this such an enticing, sensory, soul-expanding album.
The technicolour production on Moondust For My Diamond brings Hayden together for the first time with cult innovator Nathan Jenkins (Bullion) as well as long-time collaborator Richard Formby, with mastering by Heba Kadry.
