Hayden Thorpe talks about Orford Ness for this week's Talk The Line podcast

A former Ministry of Defence weapons development site during both World Wars and the Cold War tht was acquired by the National Trust in 1993 and left to re-wild, Orford Ness is where RADAR was invented, where camouflage was developed and where bombs were first strapped to planes. As a result, it was on Ness that missiles designed to deliver atomic payloads were tested and perfected. The place remains a place of paradox, mystery and constant evolution for Thorpe, whose record is an ode to the physical place and the book it inspired, written by celebrated nature writer Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Stanley Donwoood. Thorpe plays a series of solo shows this November which will see him revisit songs from his Wild Beasts days for the first time in nine years. The seminal band, which Thorpe co-founded back in 2002, went on to release five records on Domino over 15 years, including their Mercury Prize-nominated second album Two Dancers. They broke up after 2016’s Boy King, with Thorpe recording three solo albums. On Talk The Line we speak to brilliant people about the beautiful detours that make a creative life interesting – those unusual fascinations and obsessions that sometimes lie...