HEFNER - Dead Media (20th Anniversary Ed.) - LP - Transparent Green Vinyl

LP - Indies Exclusive Limited 20th Anniversary Edition on Transparent Green Vinyl. Only 300 copies in this edition.

 In their relatively brief lifetime, between 1996 and 2002, Hefner enjoyed an incredibly productive four-album, multi-EP career. Their beautiful, concise, intelligent songs earned a fiercely loyal, cult audience and the long-term support of legendary DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded innumerable sessions.

Originally released in 2001, their final album, Dead Media, found Hefner reaching out and taking risks. Keen to break free of their indiefolk roots, they cocooned themselves in a home studio with broken analogue synthesizers, antique drum machines and battery powered amplifiers. The band’s naivety and guile produced some curiously engaging music, with frontman Darren Hayman’s precise, economic, poetic dissections of quotidian romance draped over awkward, fuzzy beats: something like Cat Stevens covering Warm Leatherette.

Dead Media caused confusion at the time and ultimately lead to the band’s break up. However, the songs like ‘Junk’, ‘The Night’s Are Long’ and ‘When The Angels Play Their Drum Machines’ are among Hayman’s most adult and affecting essays and stand out among the finest of Hefner’s achievements.
 

Tracklist:

1. Dead Media
2. Trouble Kid
3. Junk
4. When The Angels Play Their Drum Machines
5. Union Chapel Day
6. China Crisis
7. Alan Bean
8. Peppermint Taste
9. The Mangle
10. The King Of Summer
11. The Nights Are Long
12. Treacle
13. Half A Life
14. Waking Up To You
15. Home