Hayden Thorpe is the singer, guitarist and songwriter of rock band Wild Beasts. Growing up in Kendal, Cumbria, Thorpe met guitarist Ben Little and together they formed the duo Fauve. In 2004 drummer Chris Talbot and bassist Gareth Bullock (later replaced by Tom Fleming) joined the band, which was renamed Wild Beasts. Signed to Domino Records, they released their first album in 2008 and their second, Two Dancers, was nominated for the Mercury pize on 2010. The band's fourth LP, Present Tense, is out now, and they are playing Unknown festival in Rovinj, Croatia, on Wednesday 10 September.
Book: The Circle by Dave Eggers
The book is based in Silicon Valley and it's almost a conspiracy theory. But it elucidates all those pitfalls we fall into in terms of signing our personal property over to the web, and what it does to your psyche. Our personal lives are now lived out in a very public arena. I personally am quite fearful of it: I don't have a Facebook or anything, because I get kind of freaked out when my past is catalogued in such an orderly manner. The book works a bit like Animal Farm: a harmless description of quite harmful things.
Gallery: Legion TV
This is a visionary little gallery down in Haggerston. It's only a very small space, but they always have an online exhibition and a physical one within the space. I'm really drawn to this aspect of the online exhibition: more and more in my own sphere of work, online has become the real battleground. At Legion there was an artist called Adham Faramawy who made an icon that you clicked, and then you had a man dancing naked on your screen. You won't click away from a man dancing with a swinging penis.
Place: God's Own Junkyard
I'm always plugging Walthamstow. This place is absolutely fantastic – it's in a very nondescript industrial estate, but when you step in you can't believe your eyes. It's an existentialist nightmare filled with neon signs [created by artist Chris Bracey]: you have a neon Jesus next to a strip-bar sign, and then there's a Mary holding a gun next to a Budweiser advert. It has that Blade-Runner-Chinatown-of-the-future feel. It's like a sensory overload. I love the unlikeliness of it: I'm really drawn to spaces where it looks so dross from the outside and you go in and it's another world.
App: KORG Gadget
My finger was hovering over the button for a while, thinking "Is any app in the world worth £27.49?" But it is. It's a collection of synthesisers developed by KORG, who usually make physical synthesisers, and they've compressed a huge amount of information into it. For someone who spends a lot of their time on buses, the possibilities it allows for making work is vast. And the physicality of tapping a screen in comparison to, say, finger-picking a guitar, means you go down a different kind of process. I think that's healthy, even if all I'm making is pretty pathetic early 90s rave.
Restaurant: Sodo, Clapton
Probably my favourite restaurant in London. It's a sourdough pizza restaurant, and it just does the best pizzas I've had in London, if not ever. It's the kind of pizza where you get to the crust and it's actually the treat. And unusually, for east London, the people who work there are incredibly friendly and helpful, and it's just a really nice atmosphere to be in. They do a very good ginger punch as well. And the tiramisu is out of this world. You can't share it.
Album: Conversations by Woman's Hour
There are some really moving songs on here. They're little gems of mini-epic pop songs: It's synth pop meets Philadelphia-era Bruce Springsteen. Everything is in miniature, but it's beautifully executed. With synth pop, the small details are what are so important, and I think they've absolutely nailed that judgment. When you're working with synthesisers you're only ever one sweep away from it becoming this gushing Calvin Harris-esque blowout.
