Hefner – Steve Lamacq Session 15.07.98 – Double Seven Inch

Indie favourites Hefner were to become regulars at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios with both Steve Lamacq and John Peel vying for their services. This is the group’s first-ever BBC session, recorded for Lamacq soon after the release of their debut LP; among the four songs is live favourite Twisting Mary’s Arm, which was usually the closing song of their live set. According to Darren Hayman, they intended never to record it but eventually relented. Gatefold package also includes free downloads of original BBC files and a set of postcards.

Songsheet:
The Librarian
Tactile
May God Protect Your Home
Twisting Mary’s Arm

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Please note, this record should ship out on or around 1st March. If you order records together with it they will also be shipped at that time.

Steve Lamacq Session 7 inch pack

Pre-order the Lamacq and Peel session together. Prices include P and P.

John Peel and Steve Lamacq Session 2 x double seven inch pack

Breaking God’s Heart – Hefner – Vinyl and 2CD

Finally, a second repress of the debut album by Darren Hayman and his first band Hefner in time for the 20th Anniversary.

It’s like the original. It has ten songs on it.

The two CD version has 40 songs on it, including 30 b-sides and outtakes.

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Breaking Gods Heart Black Vinyl

Breaking God’s Heart 2CD set with 40 songs including b-sides and unreleased songs

Or buy the download here…

The Fidelity Wars – Hefner – Vinyl Re-issue and 2CD

Another repress for Hefner’s second album.

It remains many people’s favourite album of Darren’s. Odd and angular, it is a brutal reading of falling and out and in of love and contains his most well known songs.

The CD re-issue is almost as desirable with 29 extra tracks b-sides and outtakes.

NME – “‘The Fidelity Wars’ is a treasure and comfort for anyone who’s set out on the bumpy road to love, and gotten distracted by the scenery along the way.”

Pitchfork – “Lots of bands write songs about girls. Some bands don’t write anything but songs about girls. And then there are those select few bands that elevate writing songs about girls to a hallowed art form. If David Gedge (erstwhile Wedding Present leader and current Cinerama frontman) is the president of this club, then Darren Hayman, the cocky leader of Hefner, is surely the up- and- coming VP.”

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Fidelity Wars Black Vinyl

Fidelity Wars 2CD set with 40 songs including b-sides and unreleased songs

Music To Watch News By – Darren Hayman – Download only

I like music that has a purpose. These instrumentals were composed with a guitar in my hand whilst watching the news. I wanted to not engage fully. The purpose of the music is to distract. You can watch the news with the sound down anyway. There’s one tune for every day of the week. I hope this is useful to you in some way.

All instruments by Darren Hayman, except Saturday, which features viola by James Topham.

There is also a video for every tune.



















xx​!​! – a tribute to the James Bond themes of Dame Shirley Bassey – Featuring Darren

double coloured vinyl 7″, with inner sleeves includes download

Darren covers Goldfinger with backing singers and everything.

Full track listiing…

Sleeper featuring David Gedge – Mr Kisss Kiss Bang Bang
The Left Outsides – Diamonds are Forever
Darren Hayman – Goldfinger
DJ Downfall featuring Theoretical Girl – Moonraker

SOLD OUT! SORRY!

The Doll’s House Room

Recorded in the last two weeks of May 2020 during lockdown.

My intention was to make something in lockdown that didn’t sound as though it was recorded in lockdown. Something that was open, loud and free sounding.

Recorded in the Doll’s House room at Darren’s parents house. Misha and Jon’s parts recorded at Misha’s flat and Jon’s studio, One Cat Studio.

Darren Hayman – Voice, Rickenbacker 620, Jen SX 1000, Fender Bass
Jonathan Clayton – Drums
Misha Chylkova – Voice on “Better Off Dead”

Available on download through Bandcamp.

01 Men Die First
02 Better Off Dead
03 Make a Home
04 Me and You
05 My Hand, My Heart
06 Dead Summer

Home Time – Darren Hayman

AVAILABLE NOW!


Darren Hayman
returns with the new album Home Time, due out on 22nd May via Fika Recordings. An autobiographical album about break ups, the record is tender, honest and frequently funny. Darren set an 8 track, acoustic rule for the record. Everything sounds warm, close and intimate. Darren’s own love-worn, London voice is joined on every song by the sweet antipodean tones of Hannah Winter and Laura K, recording artists and songwriters themselves with Common or Garden and Fortitude Valley.

When Darren Hayman made his debut in 1997 with the acclaimed indie band Hefner his lyrical remit was the broken hearted. His early songs told the story of the lonesome and lost, and broken dreams of love on the back streets of London. After Hefner, Hayman’s palette grew to include a unique take on place and memory. In the early 2000s he wrote a trilogy of albums around the history of Essex. In 2012 he made an instrumental album describing the tranquillity of Lidos. In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. His most recent record, 12 Astronauts, tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon.

Darren is continually obsessed with the idea of what songs can be, and the stories they can tell. As he explains, “With projects like Thankful Villages, I became interested in what a record could be, using field recordings, interviews and songs to make sound collages. I wanted to return to the stricter art of song writing and try and make the twelve best compositions I could. I wanted to make useful songs, words that could be comfort, not just thoughts that would depress.”

The songs for Home Time were written over a three-year period but recorded quickly, and with love, in Darren’s home. Home Time is a fragile, subtle slice of prettiness. Wrap it around you.

Three digital singles will be released; ‘I Tried and I Tried and I Failed’, a song about the endless, circular nature of being human, ‘I Was Thinking About You’, a song about the uncontrollable nature of memory and how it continues to haunt us even when we consider the long buried, and ‘The Joint Account’, about how when trying to negotiate matters of the heart and mind, it is sometimes the physical objects that anchor us down in the mire.

A baby sister album I Can Travel Through Time with ten one-minute songs squeezed on a seven inch is coming out alongside it on the Formosa Punk label.

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Vinyl (including download)

CD

You can also buy the download from Bandcamp here…

Stars – Various Artists (including Darren Hayman)

An album including Darren with an exclusive song ‘Blue Tinsel, Red Tinsel’. As well as 7 other artists: Whoa Melodic, Scrabbel, White Town, Spaceship, Bill Botting, Catenary Wires, and Jeff Mellin.

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I can get it to you for xmas.

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Songs of High Altitude – Album (download only)

In the two decades since he fronted indie heroes Hefner, Darren Hayman has established himself as a prolific and acclaimed solo artist, with many of his projects having a powerful, often literal focus on location, history and community.

After a recent release focused around the Apollo astronauts and his previous mammoth Thankful Villages project, Hayman is releasing a delightful travelogue album written and recorded during and after a visit to India in early summer 2019.

The collection of instrumentals (apart from one track with lyrics) is called Songs of High Altitude, and comes complete with a digital booklet of notes and paintings from the trip.

A few words on the format of this release from Darren…

“I do understand that a lot of my audience would prefer a physical record or CD. I just get so behind with things. I know it’s a brag but I really do write a lot of songs. Writing songs is like a cure to my procrastination, or perhaps more accurately, writing songs IS my procrastination. I tend to to do that instead of doing the long winded business of releasing them. I have a hard drive here with at least 5 unreleased albums going back over the past ten years. The fact that they are unreleased is no reflection on their quality. It’s luck and circumstance as to what comes out.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun for a change for people to hear the most recent thing I’d done. I made this earlier this year. Try not to think less of it because it’s a download. I just wanted to do it as an experiment. No press, no reviews, no manufacturing, boom, here it is.

Hope you like.’