Artist: Darren Hayman
Title: You Will Not Die
Format: Double 12” black gatefold vinyl and double digipack CD
Cat#: Fika089LP | Fika089CD
Release date: 4th November 2022
Bandcamp | Spotify
Following a stream of thematic and conceptual albums over the last 15 years Darren Hayman has recently returned to a more introspective, personal kind of music. Darren received critical praise, awards and government grants for albums about the witch trials in the English Civil War; the mid 20th-century boom in new towns; forgotten rural communities; and the political writings of William Morris.
“You Will Not Die is about relationships of all kinds beginning and ending, but it's also about our interior lives and how we process change as we get older. I was thinking about mortality and the temporariness of everything but also thinking of that fragility as a very beautiful thing to try and put into music."
"I think of this record as taking place at night, in contrast to the daytime setting of Home Time. This is an album about empty dance floors, lacklustre parties and lonely night buses home." The record is entirely electronic and recorded on Darren's collection of '70s synthesisers. "These instruments themselves are very fragile and mortal, they corrode and decay and behave in erratic ways. They do however, remain alive, for now."
Darren is the only musician on the album and the music conforms to a strict set of self-imposed rules; only one voice, only 12 tracks, only one polyphonic instrument. ¨Through this control and limited palette I found new melodies and structures. I wanted these old machines to guide me towards my most human record.¨
'A Real Human Being' is inspired by Darren's experience of life drawing. "Modern life encourages us to reduce people to images, jokes, memes. In life drawing, you're treating the person as a form, watching where the light and shadows fall, and then you're reminded that they are real, alive."
In 'No Lime for the Gin', a group of old friends is reunited in middle age, holding a half-hearted party where the talk is dominated by their hopes and broken dreams. 'Turn My Grey Tick Blue' is a wry look at the anxieties of dating in the digital age.
'You Were Always Here' ends the album on an optimistic note. Finding love late in life, the narrator ruminates on how the bad things happened for a reason, and that perhaps we always end up where we're supposed to be.
"In recent years my life has had its own upheavals and it would seem weird not to have this emerge in my music," says Darren. Home Time (2020) was a bright, acoustic, set of songs but was, at its heart, a break-up album. "I wanted to make fun of myself and of this kind of record."
You Will Not Die is a much slower and more brooding voyage through similar waters. It is a seductive, soulful collection of songs and instrumentals that sits among Darren's most emotive and intelligent work.
“bold and unique" The Sunday Times
“Hayman has hit a creative purple patch… a treat” Mojo
“uniquely intimate and very satisfying” - BBC
Press for You Will Not Die
“a meditative conversation with oneself, ruminating over various aspects of growing older, amorous connections taking various courses, and the two ideas being somewhat dependent on each other. Kudos to Hayman for letting this discourse take its natural course, rather than frontload the album with its catchiest songs (many of which come towards its end, with the placement reflecting a certain positivity, obtained through such contemplation)” The Quietus
“it sees Hayman at his most withdrawn and introspective, uncovering new truths hidden in well-worn themes. This is something to be celebrated: when a songwriter of Hayman’s skill turns the spotlight back on himself – and in doing so, creates a new world in miniature scale – it’s worth taking note” Folk Radio
“Sonically, Hayman has achieved some really engaging, electronic, synth-based pieces. From the ominous, bass-heavy We Are Repaired, to the bouncy and bright Don’t Haunt Me, there are plenty of little great moments.” NARC
Snack Mag interview with Darren
Biography
Best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, Darren Hayman is now 15 years, and over 14 albums, into an increasingly idiosyncratic career path, where he has taken a singular and erratic route through England’s tired and heartbroken underbelly. Darren is also writing the best tunes of his career; increasingly complex and mature songs, he is a thoughtful, concise and detailed songwriter.
Hayman’s first two solo albums, Table For One (2006) and The Secondary Modern (2007), charmed the critics – with The Guardian opining that Hayman’s profoundly English songwriting was “the match of Ray Davies”. Mostly joined by his band The Secondary Modern – a loose, urban folk collective, underpinning Hayman’s concrete sorrow with rural violins and tired pianos – he has released a series of albums, largely focused on place. This allowed for the exploration of nuanced subjects in detail, with a trio of albums based in Essex (2009’s Pram Town and 2010’s Essex Arms) and culminating in 2012’s The Violence, a 20 song account of the 17th century Essex witch trials. From this he developed an album of English Civil War folk songs of the time (2013’s Bugbears) and stayed with the historical theme for Chants For Socialists, which saw him set William Morris’ words to music, creating an album of kindness and hope that brought Hayman’s most critical acclaim yet.
In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. 12 Astronauts tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon.
