Album – Page 7

Vostok 5

Posted on 1st September 201111th August 2018 by darren

Vostok 5 was an exhibition of art and music about people and animals in space, displayed between the 1st and 7th of September 2011 at the Outside World Gallery in Shoreditch, and organised by a collective including Darren, Duncan Barrett (Tigercats), Sarah Lippett (Fever Dream), Paul Rains (Hexicon, Allo Darlin’), and Robert Rotifer (Rotifer). A 9-track CD was released featuring exclusive space songs by all the artists, including Darren’s contributions, ‘A Breeze And A Little Piece Of Coal’ and ‘Little Arrow And Little Squirrel. The sleeve folds out into a screenprinted poster. More information on the album is available here.

Buy Vostok 5 on CD

Or buy downloads via Bandcamp for £3 with some extra tracks

<a href="http://darrenhayman.bandcamp.com/album/vostok-5">Vostok 5 by Various</a>

Madrid

Posted on 30th March 200911th August 2018 by darren

Released 30 March 2009

I met the Wave Pictures in 2006 at the Walthamstow Festival. Didn’t I? I saw Franic down Brick Lane putting Wave Pictures posters up. I thought ‘that rings a bell’.

Hang on, no, I met Dave Tattersall a year earlier than that. He came to a gig that just me and Amos did in Glasgow. I remember him telling me I was a bit rude because I was more interested in talking to John from the Yummy Fur and the 1990’s. Dave had been sending me Wave Pictures CDs for a few years before that even. I remember not linking them at first. It’s rare that any of would give something a second listen, but Dave’s charm is a forceful thing you can’t say no to the guy. I started to like him and the Wave Pictures. He sent me an email telling me how he’d split up from his girl. It was self-pitying or fanny, just honest and matter of fact. I thought it an odd thing to do, but I replied and Dave has since told me it was odd that I replied. It feels to me that the first time I met the Wave Pictures was in Walthamstow. I spoke to them a while. They had moved to London. My wife said I was showing off in front of them, trying to look like the big man. They hung around the Duke of Uke, which is where I hang too. I had a tour to do in Spain and Sweden and because they were Hefner fans I thought I could get them to be my band for cheap.

They said, yes. The tour certainly had its ups and downs. Hard drives, some sparse gigs. They made me feel old, with their energy and optimism. One night I was watching their set and I realised that they were really, really good. In Barcelona some shit happened and the WPs got screwed around, I realised whilst shouting at the promoter that I cared about the Wave Pictures and they were my friends. This show was recorded by the desk engineer on the Madrid show of that tour, a happy accident. It has its faults, that’s why its cheap.

Buy Madrid on CD (includes P and P)

Or buy the download from Bandcamp for £4.99

Pram Town

Posted on 26th January 200911th August 2018 by darren

Released 26 January 2009

‘Pram Town’ was an affectionate name given to Harlow, Essex in the early 1950s. It was coined to reflect the sudden influx of young families to the ‘New Town’. New Towns were built in the aftermath of the Second World War. New Towns were designed for modern and future life and intended to be the antidote to the city.

But towns aren’t designed; they evolve. Concrete crumbles and plastic cracks and all the civic amenities in the world couldn’t put a heart into Harlow. As everybody on my street put faux Tudor leading on their windows and dreamt no longer of modernity, I escaped to London.I didn’t grow up in Harlow. I grew up in nearby Brentwood. I lived on a late-1960’s housing estate designed with the same Le Corbusier/Bauhaus aesthetics and ideals. I love and loathe these places. When seen on paper they are the streamlined epitome of the past’s future vision. When newly built, their pristine simplicity made homeowners glow with pride.

‘Pram Town’ is a set of songs about someone who doesn’t escape. A big fish in a little pond who is thrown a lifeline whilst fare-evading in a first class train carriage.

This record is about good ideas gone bad. It’s about how pride can lose you love. It’s about high and low ambition and the gap between.

Released January 26th 2009

REVIEWS FOR PRAM TOWN

‘Played straight from the heart…this is a gorgeous album.’ – Word

‘A charming tale with melodies that will buzz around your head in the cold weeks to come.’ – Narc Magazine

‘Heartbreaking’ – Q Magazine

‘These 50 minutes of bittersweet prettiness are a delight…it utterly charms…nearly has me in tears.’ – Plan B (magazine)

‘A high rise Robyn Hitchcock backed by Belle and Sebastian this is indie worthy of the name.’ – Financial Times

‘This is by far the most accomplished solo album from Hayman and evidence that age is helping the songwriter explore rich, virgin territory. Long may it continue.’ – Culture Bully / Fresh Deer Meat websites.

‘…driving home this morning I had to pull over as tears started prickling at my eyelids.’ – Everett True – The Guardian

‘…deserves to be hailed as a minor classic – the guy is a jewel in England’s musical crown and this is his best yet.’ – National Student Magazine. ‘One of his most creative and peculiarly tender albums yet.’ – The Fly

Buy Pram Town on CD

Or buy the downloads from bandcamp for £5.50

Great British Holiday EPs

Posted on 4th August 200811th August 2018 by darren

Released 4th August 2008

Between 2005 and 2007 Darren released four EPs detailing his holidays in Britain, taking ukuleles, minidisks and Casio keyboards to caravan parks, Butlins and B&Bs. The songs are sweet and tender, lo-fi vignettes of lost youth, faded photographs and half-understood Britishness.

Also included is a DVD featuring 5 videos and an interview with Darren about the project shot on the coast in Kent.This is quite a package: as well as featuring all of the EP songs and all the original artwork in a 16 page booklet, Darren has recorded 3 holiday cover versions; Holiday Road (originally by Lyndsey Buckingham from the film National Lampoons Vacation), Margate (originally by Chas and Dave) and V.A.C.A.T.I.O.N. (originally by Connie Francis)

Buy the Great British Holiday EPs on CD and DVD.

Buy this on download from Bandcamp for 6.99

Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee

Posted on 6th May 200811th August 2018 by darren

Released 6th May 2008

Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee are a country, bluegrass band from East London. They don’t sing in American accents and their songs feature tube trains, Bethnal Green, sick days, flat lemonade and unmade beds. HWTL perform weary singalongs; fragile and flawed ballads that wipe a tear and force you to smile.

Darren Hayman (ex Hefner) formed the band with Dave Watkins, in 2005, as an antidote to their ‘career’ bands. The idea was that this would be a band with as little ego as possible, with everybody taking vocals, submitting material, leaving and arriving as they wished. The group is as much about playing around Darren’s kitchen table as it is playing on any stage.

In the spirit of Big Pink, the Basement Tapes and the first McCartney album, it was decided to record the album in two days at Darren’s house, with a bunch of battered microphones, a fresh pot of tea, and some fruit cake. The resulting recordings feature seven band originals (four written by Darren and two by David Tattersall) alongside covers of songs by Townes Van Zandt and The Mountain Goats and smattering of traditional tunes.In fact the original idea was even to avoid the notion of doing records. However when Dave Tattersall (The Wave Pictures) joined in 2007 with a whole repertoire of blues and country songs, as well as his own fantastic ballads, it became obvious that they had something worth preserving.

Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee let you peer though the cracks of their kitchen, and hit nearly all the right notes in the process. Let them give you a warm handshake.

Buy Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee on CD

Or buy the download from Bandcamp for £5

Maida Vale

Posted on 4th December 200611th August 2018 by darren

On the 23rd of August 2000, Hefner played a very special show from BBC’s Maida Vale studios to an invited audience for the John Peel show. This was the highlight of the relationship between the band and the greatly revered DJ, which had seen five Peel sessions and four live concerts broadcast on his Radio 1 show.

The concert on this CD features an 8 piece version of the band, including a brass section, pedal steels, ukuleles and violin alongside their own guitars bass and drums. It also features several contributions from Amelia Fletcher, (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Wedding Present, Marine Research). The songs have been newly remixed from the original master tapes, and the CD features photos from the night as well as sleeve notes from Darren Hayman.

The CD captures an exceptional performance of many songs rarely played live during Hefner’s short career.

Buy Maida Vale on CD

or buy download from Bandcamp for £4.99

Catfight

Posted on 6th August 200611th August 2018 by darren

Released August 2006

For such a short career, Hefner were incredibly prolific, but this release proves we only knew half the story. 43 unreleased songs are collected here on two CDs. The songs are sequenced in reverse order, starting with the final Hefner recording session and going right back to 1994 with Darren’s earliest songs, 3 years before Breaking God’s Heart. The CDs also come with extensive new sleeve notes from Darren himself and previously unseen photographs.

Buy Catfight on double CD

Or buy the download from Bandcamp for £7.99.

The Best of Hefner

Posted on 27th March 200611th August 2018 by darren

Originally released 27th March 2006 on Fortune and Glory.

A collection of singles, live favourites, b-sides and rarities, The Best of Hefner re-releases twenty of the band’s most-loved songs.

Review from http://drownedinsound.com/releases/7279/reviews/726346-
BY BEN MARWOOD

In an ideal musical world where the cream does actually rise to the top and Oasis only had two albums, I would not have to explain who Hefner were. You’d already know, because the indie-rock quartet would be on every Q list ever and on MTV2 at every opportunity; there would be no escape. But life isn’t fair kids, life’s a bitch and it hates you. Life will break your heart.

That was the point of Hefner, a band renowned for the songwriting of Darren Hayman, for whom lyrical heartbreak lied around every corner. Whilst the ‘cool’ bands wrote songs about the lack of intelligence in the NYPD, Hayman wrote about the Trojan War and the future death of Margaret Thatcher as well as the countless lost loves. The songs of Hefner, whether it was their ultra-lo-fi first recordings or the polished electronica which proved to be their curtain call, were so tactile that they almost reached out and touched you and so honest, so laced with frustration that on occasion it made Belle & Sebastian look bland. “Everytime you cry, it gives me little heart attacks”, sobs Hayman on ‘Good Fruit’ with an observation so tiny that most writers would never consider it for a lyric. Coupled with a no-nonsense attitude towards intimacy (“you should be lying on your back with a glow in your heart” comes the sleazy observation in ‘Pull Yourself Together’), this is what earmarked Hefner, for me at least, as something special.

The Best Of Hefner, then, is a cross-section of the six years that Hefner were properly active, featuring both ultra-rare songs, like ‘A Better Friend and the original version of ‘Christian Girls, and their ‘hits’ ‘I Took Her Love For Granted’, ‘Good Fruit’ et al. Unlike most Best Ofs, this is not just a tired singles compilation (although all singles are present and correct), the fan favourites are on here also from the masturbatory tale of b-side ‘Hello Kitten’ to the Conservative-baiting playground singalong that is ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies’. True to the entire back catalogue, even two tracks from less popular final album Dead Media (‘When Angels Play Their Drum Machines’ and ‘Home’) are included, and when their electronica sounds are put back to back with the guitar-based portion of the back catalogue new life is breathed into them – they work much better intermingled here than they ever did mixing with their own kind.

If there is one criticism that could be made, it is that with a slew of excellent b-sides behind them only ‘Hello Kitten’ made the final cut, but it should go without saying that fans of Hefner will want to own this CD for the first few rare tracks, if not just to complete the collection. For anyone who missed out and is intrigued then I implore you: if you’ve ever been heartbroken, if you’ve ever looked at the coquette from down the road and thought “well, maybe..”, if you like your music honest, slightly filthy and faintly twee then do yourself a favour, make this top of your list.

Buy The Best of Hefner on CD

Buy the ‘Best Of’ downloads from Bandcamp for £5.99

Table for One

Posted on 6th March 200611th August 2018 by darren

Released 6th March 2006
Bruised and bloodied, former Hefner frontman Darren Hayman crawls out from his car wreck life armed with only his battle-scarred telecaster and ukulele for protection. Darren’s been given a right kicking by the music biz, but he’s not down – in fact, he’s smiling ear to ear. In the two years since his last album with The French, Darren has worked for the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals and Battersea Dogs Home, gotten married, formed a bluegrass band, put on a lot of weight and studied an Art PGCE at Goldsmiths College. “If I don’t work I go nuts, I wasted 6 months addicted to internet chess,” says Hayman. This album is his best so far; until the next one. Real drums and guitars mark a return to the indie folk style of Hefner, but better. “Every time I write a song, it’s better than the last one,” continues Hayman. “I thought it was that way for everyone?”

The songs on Hayman’s debut solo album, Table for One, concern crumbling cafes, dog charities, a broken hearted Doug Yule, retiring school teachers, and air hostesses plummeting to their deaths. It’s not fun in Darren’s head, but it IS fun to watch and listen from a distance.

Darren Hayman, Table for One (Track & Field) David Peschek The Guardian, Friday 10 March 2006 5/5

Late of Hefner, Darren Hayman is London’s laureate of sexual dysfunction, discomfort, and dog-eared under-achievement. After Hefner’s demise, he made a record of sublime, bittersweet electropop under the moniker the French, but found himself prevented from further recording by contractual wrangles.

A free man at last, he is moving into warmer, more organic territory on Table For One. Hayman’s world might seem grimly parochial but prickly moments of recognition lift every song into something sweetly noble and moving. Best is the almost unbearably poignant Doug Yule’s Velvet Underground, which restores a little dignity to the band’s brutally unloved final phase, “with none of the original members ‘cos Maureen thought she’d take a rest”.

As the music wheezes, rattles and chimes around him, you realise he’s the match of Ray Davies, or any of the quintessentially English masters.

Hefnet