Darren Hayman

Darren Hayman (born 1 December 1970) is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist, who debuted as the writer, lead singer, and guitarist in Hefner. Since Hefner disbanded in 2002, Hayman has had a prolific solo career releasing numerous albums under his own name while releasing music with The French, New Starts, and others. He has worked with The Wave Pictures, producing an album for them, directing three of their music videos and employing them as his backing band. In January, 2011, Hayman recorded and released a song every day in the month of January, working with several collaborators. Hayman also paints and has exhibited his work at exhibitions about animals in space, racing dogs and other topics. Darren Hayman debuted as a solo artist under the Hefner name in the 1990s, before expanding to a band lineup with Antony Harding, John Morrison and Jack Hayter. Working primarily with the labels Too Pure and Beggars Banquet Records the band had a number of charting releases. Hefner became favourites of BBC DJ John Peel and recorded several BBC sessions, performed on BBC Choice, and made multiple appearances in the BBC Radio 1 Festive Fifty. The band split in 2002, their discography numbering four studio albums as well as two compilations and a two live albums. Hayman's first works after Hefner were with The French, an electronic duo with John Morrison. They released their Local Information album on Too Pure in 2003, which received a five star review in The Guardian. The pair recorded two Maida Vale sessions, and had two entries in the 2003 Festive Fifty. After the French, Hayman had legal issues with Too Pure. In 2005, Hayman issued an EP with The Stereo Morphonium, another electronic project. Hayman stated afterwards that he "spunked his career up the wall spectacularly" by following Hefner with The French, adding in 2026 that "when I make an electronic record, I have to expect a smaller reaction." In 2005, Hayman released his first material under his known name, beginning a four-part-series of British Holiday-themed EPs for Static Caravan Recordings, and Cortinaland for Acuarela Discos, who had previously released The Hefner Heart EP. He performed his first BBC session as a solo artist for Huw Stephens in May 2005. The following year, Hayman recorded a second session for Stephens, as well as a BBC Radio 6 Music session for Tom Robinson. Hayman's debut solo album Table for One was released in 2006 by Track & Field, which was rated five stars in a review from The Guardian. It was followed in 2007 by Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern, his second solo album, featuring a new backing band. The album featured guest appearances from John Howard and Pete Astor. Hayman then employed The Wave Pictures as his backing band, and a short tour in 2007 resulted in the live album Madrid, credited to Darren Hayman & The Wave Pictures, as well as a TV performance on Basico. In 2008, Hayman fronted self-proclaimed "East London bluegrass" outfit Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee, releasing an eponymous album recorded around Hayman's kitchen table over two days. The band is named after Dave Watkins from Hayman's band The Secondary Modern, John Lee and Simon Trought (spelled Trout here). However, Lee and Trought do not appear on the album, which instead features David Tattersal from The Wave Pictures and fiddle player Dan Mayfield. The album was reissued in 2026 with two additional songs, covers of Jonathan Richman and Iris DeMent. Also in 2008, Hayman released the compilation Great British Holiday EPs, which collects the EPs Caravan Songs (2005), Ukulele Songs from the North Devon Coast (2006), Eastbourne Lights (2006) and Minehead (2007) which were recorded in the EPs' titular locations by Hayman during holidays. Hayman states that the collection is about "a love of days gone by". This was followed by the release of a further EP called Songs For Harmonium And Drum Machine for the p572 label in Canada, with all the songs titled after and written about the Brat Pack members Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy. During the summer, Hayman toured the UK and Spain with Jack Hayter, performing Hefner songs, including sets at End of the Road Festival and Estrella Damm Primavera Club. In 2009, Hayman released the first part of his "Essex Trilogy," Pram Town, named after Harlow, in Essex, which was given the Pram Town name by the Daily Mirror in the 1950s. The album is a 'folk-opera' concerning a relationship between a man and a woman who is out of his league, Hayman stating that the album "is a set of songs about someone who doesn't escape. It’s about how pride can lose you love. It's about high and low ambition and the gap between." In promotion of the album, Hayman recorded a BBC session for Tom Robinson. Essex Arms, the second installment in the "Essex Trilogy", was released 2010, his first release on the Fortuna Pop! record label. It is an album concerning Essex on a larger scale than Pram Town, with songs about factories closing, dogging hot spots and the littered countryside, featuring guest appearances from Emmy the Great and Fanfarlo. It received favourable reviews from The Quietus, Uncut, MusicOMH, Drowned in Sound, The Line of Best Fit, the BBC, and others. During January 2011, Hayman recorded and released a song every day of the month, as well as keeping a video diary each day, making them available free of charge. The songs featured different collaborators on different days, including Elizabeth Morris from Allo Darlin', The Wave Pictures, Jack Hayter and Ballboy. Hayman states about the project: "I get tired of having to wait to release songs and records. I thought this would be a way to solve the release bottleneck. I thought it would be funny and at least a little interesting." The song "I Know I Fucked Up" placed at #4 in the Festive Fifty, now under the umbrella of Dandelion Radio. Following the January project, Hayman curated the Vostok 5 exhibition at the Outside world Gallery in London which ran from 1 to 7 September 2011. The exhibition was "for people who love rockets and animals" according to Hayman and featured songs and paintings by Hayman, Paul Rains (Allo Darlin'), Duncan Barrett (Tigercats), Robert Rotifer (Rotifer) and Sarah Lippet (Fever Dream) about animals and humans that have travelled to space, including soviet space dogs, Alexei Leonov, Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev. Hayman then released The Green and the Grey (2011), an album featuring additional tracks from the Essex Arms sessions and produced the album Beer in the Breakers (2011) for The Wave Pictures. In October 2011, Hayman released The Ship's Piano, an album recorded entirely on a 1933 fold-away piano, the type of piano often found "crammed into the corners of seafaring parlours." Hayman told Clash that the piano is the first instrument he owned that was older than he was and that the title song is about an imagined history of the piano's former owners. The record was written while Hayman was recovering from a head injury, "which rendered him extra sensitive to sound". The album's single, "I Taught You How to Dance" reached #68 in the UK Physical Singles Chart. In December 2011 The Hosting Couple by Rotifer was released, with whom Hayman was the bass player at the time, alongside frontman Robert Rotifer and Ian Button. The album was produced by Wreckless Eric and released on Edwyn Collins' AED Records. Rotifer states of Hayman that "it was always quite funny playing with Darren Hayman, because he is not really a bass player. He has this tiny toy bass, a little Fender, and he had this really idiosyncratic way of playing". For his final projects in 2011, Hayman curated a musical advent calendar in association with Fika Recordings, where two festive songs were made available for free every day of the advent period, and released the Christmas EP, Christmas in Haworth. In January 2012, one year after recording a song a day, Hayman released an album of all the