Drummer, songwriter, sound activist Charles Hayward was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. Since the late 1980s, Hayward has recorded solo projects of songs and imaginative sound worlds and he collaborates, most notably in Massacre with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith and with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor in About Group. The project This Is Not This Heat has recently completed a 3-year series of performances in the UK, Europe, US and Japan.
Throughout a nearly 50-year career, Charles has developed idiosyncratic attitudes and insights into a wide range of sound work, spanning improvisation, song, sound as sound, using order and chaos as creative energies. Recent releases include the piano centred song cycle ‘Begin Anywhere’ and the intertwining ‘Crossfade Estate’ sequence. Never at rest, he has recently formed a new group, ABSTRACT CONCRETE and their first album is near completion.
Charles’ music is both innovative and communicative, intense and committed, music that pushes at the edges of the new, challenging the already known, questioning frontiers and embracing divergent energies.
