Manchester Scenewipe

Darren Hayman

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011, 12:33 pm

Essex-born Darren Hayman is a singer/songwriter who releases albums as a solo artist, but he is best known as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the UK indie band Hefner.

Hayman formed Hefner in 1992 in Kent along with fellow art-school student Antony Harding (later a.k.a. ANT), who played the drums. Moving to London and joining up with John Morrison (bass) and later Jack Hayter (multi-instrumentalist) they started to perform live from 1995, and from ‘97 they released four studio albums (plus one b-side collection, a live album and a compilation) before splitting up in 2002.
All Hefner albums have lyrically been strongly focused on the pathos of geeky young men having troubles with their (lacking) love life. Musically Hefner had a very lo-fi guitar-based singer/songwriter touch to them, but Haymans characteristic somewhat off-key and slightly nasal vocals strongly enforced the emphasism and the irony of the lyrics.
With their last album: Dead Media The band included more analogue synth sounds and drum machines in their music though.

Darren has recently reunited with Jack Hayter to tour a series of Hefner only sets, in celebration of the re-release of The Fidelity Wars. The first gig, in Copenhagen, found ANT in the audience.

Along with Morrison, Hayman released one EP, one album and a single as The French in the years 2003-2004 continuing somewhat in the lyrical and musical uviverse, where Hefner left off including even more electronics.

Hayman has also released an EP with Joël Neumatic calling themselves The Stereo Morphonium. The sound of this project is even more electronic, and the project is still officially ongoing.

Darren Hayman can now be found performing solo – his solo debut album Table For One was released in early 2006 and he has released numerous EPs. In 2007, Darren released his second solo album, Darren Hayman And The Secondary Modern.

Along with his solo career, Hayman plays bass and sings in the indie bluegrass band Hayman, Watkins Trout and Lee along with Dave Watkins, David Tattersal (The Wave Pictures) and Dan Mayfield, and he plays bass in the live line-up of Ellis Island Sound.

www.hefnet.com