INTERVIEW
UNIVERSITY CHALLENGED
STEVE SPITHRAY TALKS TO PROLIFIC MIDDLESBROUGH POLYMATH OLI HEFFERNAN ABOUT HIS LATEST COLLABORATION
The sheer work rate of Middlesbrough’s musical polymath Oli Heffernan is to be admired for sure, but it is the exceptional quality of his output that impresses the most; he’s already readied and released a number of albums and EPs under his solo guise as Ivan the Tolerable in the last year. However, the cosmic out-rock of latest project University Challenged is another fully collaborative effort which sees Oli team up with long-time King Champion Sounds collaborator Ajay Saggar and Bo Ningen’s Kohhei Matsuda for a double vinyl release of organic drones, subtle electronica and occasional bird noises. Often a genteel bassline and Eastern aesthetics subtly fill the background; a gentle cacophony, like a collection of ambient wanderings through a Chinese tea garden, while an assortment of expertly selected spoken word samples also marks University Challenged as quietly political. I tracked Oli down in a virtual beer garden somewhere in Middlesbrough, as a kindly whiff of pale ale and roll-ups filled the digital air, to find out all about it… “Ajay and I have worked together a load over the past decade, we both like to keep busy and work constantly on stuff so it’s a good fit. I was booked on a flight to Amsterdam to spend a week in the studio recording this LP and the next King Champion Sounds one
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with him when COVID struck and I couldn’t go, which was a massive shame. As time passed it became clear I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon so we decided to do University Challenged remotely. The three of us started bouncing tracks around until we had enough stuff and then Ajay spent two months shaping and editing it in his studio in Holland. It has come out way better than I think any of us thought it would. When we’ve played together in the past it’s always been about the feel and sound of us playing together loud in a room, so it came out different to how we expected but I think we hit upon something really nice.” With musical connections all over the world, working remotely is not something Oli is too bothered about in the short term. “We’ve all been recording remotely for years for various other things we do. It’s a good way to work without distractions and you can work at your own pace,” - which for Oli is usually fast – “plus you have access to all your own gear rather than whatever KLM allow you to shove into a plane locker!” That’s not to say playing live is out of the question for University Challenged, “we played a few live improv shows together in Holland in 2019 which was the first time we played with Kohhei [who had just moved to Amsterdam] and it sounded great almost instantly. We planned to do a few shows in
