'Hayward's plunge into the fertile realm of noise and microtonal articulation suggests laboratory work, industrial processes... a lost world of steam engines chugging and hissing. That's not to say that his playing is imitative or merely a matter of sound effects. His expansion of the tuba's musical language is dramatic, with a sure sense of shape and movement that is musically rewarding as well as acoustically intriguing' - The Wire (from review of States of Rushing)
'Valve Division...(is a) 24-minute study in pure minimalist linear additive process, patiently and painstakingly exploring intervallically expanding / contracting ascending / descending melodic cells across the entire range of the instrument with a rigour Tom Johnson would be proud of... if you ever want to hear pure microtonal logic in action, this is the one to go for' - Paris Transatlantic Magazine
Since the year 2000 Robin Hayward has been composing a series of acoustic-noise based solo tuba pieces, drawing mainly on the rotating valve technique he discovered around 1996. Two of these, Dial and Coil, were released in 2005 on his solo CD Valve Division. A series of more recent acoustic-noise based pieces was released in December 2009 on his second solo CD / LP States of Rushing.
Alongside this he has also been exploring the tuba's microtonal potential, and in 2009 developed the first fully microtonal tuba. In 2010 he composed the piece Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse for this tuba and live-electronics, followed by the pieces Plateau Square and Tetrahedron for microtonal tuba and live-electronics in 2011.