Hailing from Middlesbrough, a small industrial town in North East England, Oli Heffernan has been making loops, field recordings and 4-track doodles at home and on holidays since the mid nineties. From early on in his life, he has played with a number of different groups, and over the years ended up supporting bands like The Fall, Echo And The Bunnymen, Clinic, John Cooper Clarke, Leaves, Future Of The Left, Archie Bronson Outfit.

His current Project, Detective Instinct, was born out of a combination of boredom and a need for distraction...

I began by going through old tapes and realizing a lot of it was good stuff and i needed to do something worthwhile with it so I wrote to a few friends from bands I’d been involved in or had played with and then we began a type of online exchange of recordings: I’d send tracks out then they’d add vocals and send them back, Mike Watt heard the songs on myspace and wrote asking if he could play them on his radio show in LA so i chanced my arm and asked him if he wanted to get involved, which he did. I then began asking other people who’s work i admired and was surprised by how many people wanted to contribute, and it went from there...

Buried in the mix of the songs are field recordings of haunted buildings, people going about their business, and lots of found sounds recorded while he was on tour throughout Europe with Das Wanderlust. The imagery for the series as well, was found in an old book of woodcuts bought in a dusty bookshop in a small seaside town, assembled with the help of Nicky Peacock.

Sick Room Records has the privilege of releasing the first four collaborations as a series of limited edition 7-inch EPs, entitled Detective Instinct Presents:
SRR 056 The Champagne (Country Teasers/Gag)
SRR 057 Mike Watt (Minutemen/Firehose/Sonic Youth/Stooges)
SRR 058 G.W. Sok (The Ex/In The Fishtank)
SRR 059 Jimmy McGee (Bobby McGees)

Oli has also recently been working with:
Truman’s Water (Thurston Moore/Chan Marshall/John Peel Favourites)
Nicky Peacock (Golden Starlet/Slampt Records/Photographer/Peel Favourites)
Brian Stevenson (Junior Elvis)
Jad Fair (Half Japanese/Yo La Tengo/Richard Hell/Kevin Blechdom)
Radar Brothers (Chemical Underground Records)
Jackie McKeown (Yummy Fur/1990s/Rough Trade and Slampt Records)
Emily Ryan (Emilys Sassy Lime/Kill Rock Stars)
Mr Tube And The Flying Objects (Black Heart Procession)
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