Darren Hayman, the Brentwood-born songwriter behind Hefner and The French, released a surprise studio album called I'm Your Team on 16 October through Audio Antihero, with no announcement beforehand. The songs were written after 2022's You Will Not Die and then shelved for several years while he got on with his band New Starts, his Never-Ending Singles Club and the solo album Amazing Things. He says he isn't sure why he didn't release it at the time – "a loss of confidence perhaps".
Hayman has made albums about witch trials, mid 20th-century new towns, forgotten rural communities and the political writings of William Morris, and his press release says this one has the most extreme set of restrictions of any project he's tackled. The only instruments are a DX7 synthesiser, a TR707 drum machine and a Rickenbacker bass, plus his voice, and he was given both the DX7 and the TR707 for free. "I looked around my music room for the least loved and most underused machines I have," he says.
Making a whole album from a DX7, a TR707 and a bass is the sort of limit Hayman has always liked to set himself, and I'm happy to put this one in front of people. Surprise releases can slip past unnoticed when they appear overnight, so I'd rather say plainly that I'm backing it.
The DX7 was an expensive digital keyboard when it came out in 1983, and it turned up on hits by Prince, Whitney Houston and Phil Collins through the decade. It was also notoriously hard to programme, which is why Hayman wanted to be one of the few people who still knew how to. The album was originally going to be called DX707, until he decided it was more than the sum of its parts.
He describes the songs as direct and recorded solo, written about his own sense of loss with no characters or other players to hide behind. The press release mentions soul and lovers rock as influences, and says it is as much Timmy Thomas as Kraftwerk. Hayman calls it "one of the most focused and beautiful records I've ever made".
It is his second surprise release in two months, after The French's TV Themes EP on 18 September, and it follows a support tour with David Gedge of The Wedding Present. The key tracks listed are Darling, All the Time, Close Your Eyes and Face the Sun, and Make Love Stay, and the label says it is for fans of David Sylvian, Timmy Thomas and The Blue Nile. The Guardian once called him "Britain's most incisive songwriter" and Stewart Lee called him a "national treasure".
Listen to I'm Your Team on Bandcamp: https://darrenhayman.bandcamp.com/album/im-your-team
Stream it: https://tr.ee/xCGMh2j3NU
Hear The French's TV Themes EP: https://tr.ee/rsjQgxt8LP
Darren Hayman's biography: https://hefnet.com/biography/