Throughout the year, Atwood Magazine invites members of the music industry to participate in a series of essays reflecting on art, identity, culture, inclusion, and more.

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Stream: “The Hymn for the Cigarettes” – Hefner

introduction by Jamie Halliday

Darren Hayman has been referred to as “Britain’s most incisive songwriter” in The Guardian and a “national treasure” by Stewart Lee.

He’s also made a lot of albums, and according to the UK’s AIM Independent Music Awards, he was also the “Hardest Working Musician” of 2016.

These albums began with Hefner in 1998, loud and brash Indie Rock songs about feeling and f***ing. The Hefner sound merged with Northern Soul and then Electronic Pop in the latter half of their recording career, while still remaining firm favourites of the ever-eclectic John Peel throughout.

Those years would bring Hayman’s songs into the UK singles and album charts before the wholly analogue Electronic sound of his second band, The French, would instead provide a lengthy legal dispute with his label, Too Pure.

Once freed from that, the albums would again start coming, and they would keep coming. Early solo records like Table for One and Darren Hayman & The Secondary Modern saw him return to guitars, albeit with a little more emphasis on the latter half of the “Urban Folk” tag that Hefner had used.

Over the years, Hayman would lean harder into thematic works and concept albums, like The Violence (detailed on Atwood Magazine earlier this year), Thankful Villages, and Chants for Socialists.

Inspired by experiences of learning from a favorite art teacher of his, Hayman also enjoys the creative challenge of putting rules and restrictions on the writing and recording of his albums. In the cases of the classic ‘Essex Arms’ and underrated ‘Home Time,’ a focus on purely mic’d acoustic instruments has created some of the warmest, and at times, and most collaborative-sounding songs of his career.

Like the aforementioned two, I’m Your Team is very much an album based on self-imposed constraints, but on the polar end of the spectrum. There’s no Emmy the Great duet to be found here. 

This album, which sat shelved for quite some time until its surprise release on October 16th via Audio Antihero (Frog / Avery Friedman / Josaleigh Pollett), was recorded entirely solo, with only three instruments permitted (plus voice). Hayman employed his trusty Rickenbacker bass, and the frankly ancient combination of a DX7 synthesizer and a TR707 drum machine. 

The press materials share that the album’s original title was ‘DX707,’ until Hayman determined that he tends to “make a feature out of the method, when the method isn’t as interesting as the result.” His ideal is that I’m Your Team feels like “an album, not a project, exercise, experiment or gimmick.”

What he’s produced with his pile of dead technology is likely the most minimal, aching, fragile, and gentle record of his career. Hayman has made albums entirely solo before, but he’s never sounded more alone. Vocally, he almost feels out of place over these nostalgic electronic sounds, but that pairs beautifully with the lyrics, which are filled with a heartbreaking hope and quiet desperation. I’m Your Team is as much a musical last stand as it is a collection of songs, and we’re glad to share this making-of essay from its creator. – Jamie Halliday

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THE LISTENER KNOWS SOMETHING THE SINGER DOESN’T

The Making of Darren Hayman’s I’m Your Team

by Darren Hayman

I once read an interview with Paddy McAloon, where he talked about having so many unreleased songs cluttering up his studio that he would sometimes rewrite and re-record a song because it was quicker than finding it again.

The story was presented as the maddest, most oddball thing the interviewer had ever heard, but I just thought, “Oh, I do that all the time.” In the case of this album, I’m Your Team,’ I basically just forgot that I made it entirely.

It’s an uncomfortable thing to talk publicly about how many songs and albums I make; I feel that it can only sound boastful and crass. I’m also aware that the most obvious criticism of my process would be that I should release less records and that maybe I should take longer and produce records that are more worthwhile. This is valid.

I think I would be a more successful musician if I released less music and was better at refining and finishing things. But I just am the way I am. For me, there seems to be a very finite and short amount of time that an idea is worth working on. I feel that music so often gets overcooked by being in the oven much longer than it needs to be. I can’t help myself.

I only get to release about half of what I write and make, if that. I have a good friend now who is trying to help me with this and is going through my messy archive and finding things that deserve to be released. When we heard this record, it sounded strange and unlike anything else in my catalogue, and we decided to release it straight away.

I’m Your Team was made in the last couple of years, but I honestly can’t remember when exactly. It is made using only a DX7 synthesiser, a TR 707 drum machine, and a bass guitar. The DX7 and the TR707 were given to me by two different people who considered them to be so unfashionable to the point of uselessness. The DX7 is a very sterile and digital-sounding instrument that you hear on many pop and soul records from the ‘80s and ‘90s. It is also used by Aphex Twin and Brian Eno, so it has two lives.

I liked that they were both unwanted and largely unused in my studio, and I thought it would make an interesting restriction for the process of an album. It meant that every time I went into my studio, there was no decision to be made. The drum machine and keyboard were set up, and I just had to decide on how different I was going to make them sound on that day. As much as I was trying to see what different things I could get them to do, they wouldn’t stop being themselves, and a very serene and sad music came out of them.

Dare I say it, but there’s also the tiniest bit of soul or dance music in there, too. The album reminds me of my own teenage discos and the slow dances, where a cruel lottery would decide if you were smooching or standing in the corner.

I think the gentle and clean music that was coming out of these machines also decided what I was singing about. I’m Your Team is a love album, but our narrator sounds like he is insisting too much. He wants to make sure that you know he’s sticking around, but why does everything feel like it’s ending? I think the listener knows something the singer doesn’t.

I was listening to the record today and thinking, “Is this the best thing I’ve ever done?” Don’t get too excited; I think that at least once on every record I make. I also thought it was the worst at some point as well. This might be one of the most complete records I’ve ever made, though. It is very still and quiet and retains a certain mood all the way through.

I don’t exactly know why it didn’t come out when I first made it, and it won’t be the last time you hear me say that in the coming months, I’m sure. Whether it was self-doubt or just plain forgetfulness, I’m glad it’s here now.

I hope you like it. I do. For now. Until I forget that I made it again.

Darren will be leading a month’s worth of weekly Thursday painting workshops for all ability levels at Soho Poly in central London between November 12th and December 3rd. – Darren Hayman

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:: stream/purchase I’m Your Team here ::

:: connect with Darren Hayman here ::

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