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On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

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News

Part 2 of Darren Hayman's Essex trilogy announced

Article written by Paul M - Jul 15, 2010

Darren Hayman

A press release on behalf of Darren Hayman have announced details of his forthcoming album. Essex Arms will be released with his cohorts The Secondary Modern on 4th October 2010.

The PR reads: "Darren, of course, is best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, although it's worth noting that he has now made six albums to Hefner's four. In the latest incarnation of the constantly morphing Secondary Modern he has gathered together a set of musicians with the chops to do justice to his increasingly complex and mature songs; a tight, tough, but soulful folk-rock orchestra reminiscent of a more urban Incredible String Band or an Anglicized Lambchop.

The second in a proposed trilogy of albums about Hayman's home county of Essex, Essex Arms is a conceptual piece about the East Anglian rural underbelly. Whereas Pram Town (2009) dealt with the displacement and ennui of living in a new town (Harlow) - and received the best reviews of Hayman's post-Hefner career - Essex Arms takes the narrative to the countryside.

"I was trying to make innovative rock music without the use of electrically amplified instruments. I wanted oboes and harmoniums to take the place of synthesizers and samplers, to make something purely acoustic that wasn't polite or ineffectual."

Featuring contributions from The Wave Pictures, Fanfarlo and, on the single 'Calling Out Your Name', a duet with Emmy the Great, Essex Arms achieves all that and more as Hayman paints his pictures of love and squalor in the fields and lanes on the edge of London, in the process reaffirming his credentials as one of Britain's finest living songwriters."

You can see a video of Two Tree Island, shot in Super 8, from the album here

Links:
http://www.hefnet.com/essex