Hefner Hayman first made a name for himself as the lead singer and main songwriter in UK
indie rock band
Hefner, who were big favourites of the late
John Peel. The band split in 2002, their discography numbering four studio albums as well as a number of compilations and a live album.
The French and The Stereo Morphonium Hayman's first works after Hefner were an album with
The French and an
EP with The Stereo Morphonium. Both were electronic projects. Hayman stated afterwards that he "spunked his career up the wall spectacularly" by following Hefner with the electronic The French.
Table for One and The Secondary Modern 2016 Hayman's debut solo album
Table for One was released in 2006 by
Track & Field, receiving a five star review in
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 singer-songwriter
John Howard and Pete Astor (of
The Loft and
The Weather Prophets fame). Hayman employed
The Wave Pictures as his backing band for a short tour in 2007, resulting in the live album
Madrid, credited to Darren Hayman & The Wave Pictures.
Hayman, Watkins, Trout and Lee and Great British Holiday EPs 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 from B-Monster and Simon Trought (spelled Trout here) from
Tompaulin. 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". 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". 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.
January Songs recording and Vostok 5 exhibition 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. 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.
''The Ship's Piano, Rotifer and Christmas in Haworth'' Still in 2011, Hayman's next solo album, ''
The Ship's Piano, was released, 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". 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 former
Thrashing Doves member
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.
January Songs, The Shit Piano, and Lido In January 2012, one year after recording a song a day, Hayman released an album of all the tracks called
January Songs, each individual CD coming with its own hand-drawn cover art. The album was recorded in one day, and is influenced by "the tradition of remixes and ...
dub versions of albums", Hayman stating that the title is based on a pun and that the album "definitely isn't 'shit' on purpose". In April 2012 Hayman directed the music video for The Wave Pictures single "Spaghetti". Later that year, in August 2012,
Lido, an instrumental album with songs named after, inspired by and often featuring
field recordings of
lidos in the UK was released. Included are songs about lidos that are still open, such as
London Fields and the
Brockwell Lido, but also ones that have closed, such as the Brentwood lido.
The Essex Trilogy completed In October 2012 Hayman completed his "Essex Trilogy" with the release of
The Violence, a double album mostly concerned with the 17th century Essex Witch Trials conducted by
Matthew Hopkins. Other songs on the album cover topical events, such as "Henrietta Maria" which is sung from the perspective of
Charles I as he serenades
Henrietta Maria of France. Hayman states that he found parallels with those eras and modern times, stating: "I make some sort of connection between how in times of hardship or war we tend to distrust the outsider, how there is a fear and mistrust in a community". This contained, alongside "Henrietta Maria" from
The Violence, songs about three other queens;
Elizabeth I,
Lady Jane Grey and
Eleanor Of Aquitaine. Papernut Cambridge, Ian Button's band who Hayman is a member of, alongside Button and
Mat Flint (both also in
Death in Vegas), Ralegh Long and Jack Hayter, amongst others, released their debut album
Cambridge Nutflake in December 2013. Throughout early 2015 Hayman released three EPs as Brute Love, an improvisational synthesizer band Hayman formed with Emma Winston. In the summer of 2015 Hayman released
Folk Lullabies for Children and the Childless, a limited edition cassette with versions of lullabies from around the world. This was followed in November 2015 by Hayman's next album
Florence, an album recorded whilst Hayman was on holiday and his first album without any collaborators.
Thankful Villages and The Hayman Kupa Band On 3 June 2016 Hayman released the first of three albums of work inspired by and written in-situ at
Thankful Villages - settlements in England and Wales from which all their then-members of the armed forces survived World War I. Hayman asked Emma Kupa (
Standard Fare,
Mammoth Penguins) to sing on his 2013 single
Boy, Look At What You Can’t Have Now. Following this collaboration, they began to co-write a series of duets: these were released on a self-titled album as The Hayman Kupa Band on 21 July 2017.
New Starts In 2024, Heyman formed band, New Starts, who released their debut album, More Breakup Songs, via
Fika Recordings in August 2024. ==Discography==