Hard-Fi is an English
alternative rock band formed in Staines
, Surrey
in
2003. The band´s members are
Richard Archer (vocals and guitar),
Kai Stephens (
bass
guitar),
Ross Phillips (
guitar) and
Steve
Kemp (
drums).
They achieved chart success with their third single, "
Hard to Beat" and then followed by other
successful singles such as "
Cash
Machine" and "
Living for the
Weekend", which all reached top 15 in the
UK Singles Chart. Their debut album
Stars of CCTV was released on
4 July 2005, and although receiving critical acclaim (
NME called it album of the year and was nominated for
the Mercury Prize and two
BRIT Awards,
Best British Group and Best British Rock Act), it didn't reach #1
in the UK albums chart until six months later on 22 January 2006.
It originally peaked at number 6. The band's second album,
Once Upon a
Time in the West, was released on 3 September 2007 and
reached number 1 in its first week.
They are generally considered part of the indie rock scene,
although Richard Archer has mentioned numerous times that they are
heavily influenced by soul and dance music.
History
Early years: Contempo 1997 - 2001
Richard Archer decided to return to
his hometown of Staines, crushed by the lack of success his former
band
Contempo and by the death of
his father after his struggle against cancer. "I moved back to
Staines because I ran out of money and it was quite a shock," he
says.
Archer claims that music business insiders tried to dissuade the
band's manager Warren Clarke from managing him. When Archer asked
his publishers for some money to record the new songs that he had
written, they terminated his contract instead. "People told him,
don't bother with Archer, he's damaged goods, you're wasting your
time'."
Formation and early success: 2001 - 2004
While Archer was making demos to produce an album, he went inside
the Staines hi-fi shop where Ross Phillips worked, wanting to buy
equipment, simply so he could listen to his latest demos on the
shop's best stereo gear. Philips apparently asked Archer who played
guitar on his his demos, Archer said that it was himself which is
when Phillips said it was 'shit', and was therefore recruited to
play guitar for the new group. Steve Kemp was already an old friend
of Richard and Kai took little persuasion to leave his job as a
"pest killer".
The band were signed to newly formed independent label,
Necessary Records, owned by Clarke. The
majority of Stars of CCTV was recorded in a variety of unusual
acoustic environments - in bedrooms, in pubs, and played back in
their producer, Wolsey White's,
BMW. 1000 copies
of this record were pressed with only 500 going on public sale, and
the initial plan was to sell 1000 each time. However, it quickly
sold out, receiving critical acclaim and radio play, proving a lot
more successful than the band had imagined. In a disused
mini cab office, which cost them about £300, is
where most the album was recorded and is known to this day as the
"Cherry Lips" Studio. The band used to try and make their music
sound more atmospheric by putting a microphone in the corridor to
add echo; listening closely to the record reveals that this also
picked up passersby humming and whistling and the occasional plane
going overhead.
Archer desperately tried to generate publicity for the band through
the Staines Observer, however, to no avail. "We sent them a press
release and a photo," said Archer. "The press release was all like,
the hard-hitting sound of the streets and stuff. And the article
came out going, 'Richard Archer, former pupil of Thamesmead School
...' Whatever you say, they seem to be most interested in what
school you went to."
The band were then licensed to the
Atlantic Records label (a major) in
December 2004, where they were given the chance to re-record the
album.
The
band were offered the chance to record in the renowned Abbey Road
Studios
among other well known studios however, the band
went back to the cab office to maintain their sound.
Name
"Hard-Fi" is the name given to the sound produced by
Lee "Scratch" Perry, a Grammy award-winning reggae and
dub artist, at his
Black Ark recording studio. Being admirers of Perry's
work, the band decided to name themselves after his distinctive
sound. Archer said "Since then I've been desperately trying to find
the biography where I read it; but I may have dreamt it."
Stars of CCTV
Their debut album's launch party was scheduled to be
7 July 2005 at
Cheekees night
club in Staines, however this was cancelled due to the ill health
of Richard's mother, and the
London bombings also occurring
that day.
Her death resulted in the band pulling out of
the Glastonbury
festival
. The launch party was rescheduled for 13 July 2005 and the venue changed to Ladbroke Grove
, London
.
The
Stars of CCTV album re-entered the official UK album
chart at #4 on 1 January 2006. Two places higher than it originally
went in on the week of its release, the album climbed from #33 .
Stars of CCTV finally got to #1 on 22 January 2006. The band's
re-release of Cash Machine entered the official Top 40 singles
chart at #14 on
1 January.
The album has reached
sales of 1.2 million copies worldwide and sales of over 600,000 in
the UK
alone.
Hard-Fi
gained increased prominence in the UK
when Stars of CCTV was nominated for the 2005
Mercury Music Prize alongside
other albums such as A Certain
Trigger by Maxïmo Park and
Silent Alarm by Bloc Party.Stars Of CCTV scored 74 out of
100 on Metacritic
In February 2006, the band were nominated for two
BRIT Awards, Best British Group and Best British
Rock Act, alongside international superstars such as
Gorillaz,
Franz
Ferdinand and
Oasis. Richard spoke
about the nominations, "I don't think we'll win it, especially best
group when you've got
Coldplay, Franz
Ferdinand and Gorillaz in there, they're kind of big hitters, but
you never know,
Burton drew with
Man United". "Last week I
would have probably said "nah it's all rubbish", but now I'm
nominated "it's great" but what is good is that there's a real wide
spread of stuff there, but there's no Best Dance award and the
urban category is more pop than what's quality."
Once Upon a Time in the West
Hard-Fi expanded their taxi cab office which they used to record,
or as they call it, the
Cherry Lips making more room for
equipment after having searched fruitlessly for a space. Frontman
Richard Archer describes the record as "darker" and "more
expansive".
The first single from the album was "
Suburban Knights", released on
20 August. The single had its first play on 18
June 2007, at 7:20 pm (BST) on Radio 1.
The album Once Upon A Time In The
West was released on 3 September 2007 when the band launched it
at the midnight in Virgin Megastore
in Oxford
Street
, London with a live
performance from a selected set list followed by a CD
signing. The following day, the band performed at
Maida Vale Studios to a small
audience who earned their tickets through Radio 1.
The album cover of
Once Upon A Time In The West has a
yellow background with the album title at the top, and NO COVER ART
written in large, white letters below. The artwork has received
mixed criticism, however, top cover art designer
Peter Saville has described it as "a
'White Album' for the digital culture."
On
9 September, 'Once Upon A Time In The
West' went straight in at #1 in the Album Charts giving the band a
second #1 album following Stars of CCTV. It received positive
reviews including five stars from The Observer Monthly and four
stars from Q Magazine scoring 70 out of 100 on Metacritic.
This album has gone even further in the world than their debut
album "Stars of CCTV" as it has reached Japan's Top 10 chart.
Mexico
, Argentina
, Brazil
and Central America have begun to show interest
in the band as the first single from the album "Suburban Knights"
charted in all of their respective charts, reaching #5 in Peru, #3
in Guatemala, #2 El Salvador, #8 Mexico alongside their second
single "Can't Get
Along " which spent two weeks on #1 in Peru
and Argentina.On 10 March 2008 the third single from
'Once Upon A Time In The
West', 'I Shall Overcome' was
released in the UK reaching
#35, while it reached top five in South
America just like the previous two singles entering in at
#4.
Untitled third album
During the
Christmas
period of
2008, the band released a
Christmas message to their fans thanking them for their support and
announcing that they will be back in the new year with a "wicked"
new album.
On February 2, 2009, Ross released a blog on the band's official
MySpace page saying "After a nice long
christmas break, me and the boys are now back in the cherry lips
recording facility working hard on the new tunes. Sounding great by
the way. We're really pleased with how the album's shaping up.
Hopefully over the next few months we'll put some bits and pieces
up for you to have a listen."
On October 29, 2009, Hard-Fi posted a blog on their official
website stating that they're starting production on their new
album.
Musical style
Hard-Fi's musical style is a mix of
post-punk,
indie and a
Clash style of
punk
rock. They also take inspiration from other genres such as
ska. On
Stars of CCTV, they had a very
raw sound, loud guitars, and frequent use of guitar, in contrast to
Once Upon A Time In The West, on which there is a lot more
orchestration, the use of strings is very apparent, most notably in
the song "Watch Me Fall Apart".
Upon starting out, Hard-Fi often listened to music through the
medium of radio and the internet, read magazines and watched music
videos. As a band, they felt no up-and-coming bands really
connected their lyrics to their own lives. Hard-Fi wanted to change
this with their own style.
Hard-Fi's lyrics are based mostly on working class life, the band
themselves coming from a self sufficient suburban lifestyle in
Staines, which is where the band are from. Most notable in tracks
such as "
Suburban Knights" ("Those
bills keep dropping through my door") and "
Living for the Weekend" ("I've been
working all week I'm tired"), while other songs such as "Tonight",
despite still being about suburban life, focus more on ambitions.
Some
songs are also based on social realism, "Feltham is Singing
Out" is inspired by Zahid Mubarek who was sent to the Feltham
Young Offenders' Institution
and was murdered by his racist
cellmate.
Other songs, such as "
Better Do
Better" and "
Move on Now", are centred around the
premise of how hard romantic relationships can be. Once Hard-Fi
were becoming successful Archer's mother had died, the song
"
Help Me Please" is about how difficult it was for him
having his dreams come true after many unsuccessful bands but
realises he has no parents to share the joy with. Similarly, "The
King" is about Archer returning to Staines and finding everything
completely different, and realising everything of which he knew and
loved had disappeared. Archer describes "Little Angel" as
Christina Aguilera having a fight with
The Clash in a northern Soul club.
Live
Hard-Fi's
first live performance was in Manchester
in 2003 before the band were signed.
They
played London's Brixton
Academy
from 14 May-18 May, making them one of the few bands to play five
consecutive sold-out nights there and the first to do so off the
back of their debut album. After the success of the Stars of
CCTV album and of hit single
Hard to
Beat allowed them to end up in a mini-reunion of
the Specials, performing
Ghost Town with
Jerry Dammers and
Neville Staples at the
Love Music Hate Racism gig.
Mick Jones of
the Clash is a renowned fan of the band, while
Paul Weller came to their
rehearsal rooms and jammed a version of "
A Town Called Malice", something of
which Kai Stephens says "gives us bragging rights over all of
Staines" All of these artists were quite inspirational towards
Hard-Fi while they were recording Stars of CCTV, perhaps the
Specials and the Clash being the larger influences.
Mick Jones also appeared with them performing
E=MC² by his former band
Big Audio Dynamite. Jones had previously
helped produce tracks by Richard Archer's prior band, Contempo who
had recorded a cover of "
London's
Burning" by The Clash.
Hard-Fi
supported Green Day at their two gigs at
Milton
Keynes Bowl
, England performing in front of a crowd of
approximately 65,000 people.
In 2005,
Hard-Fi performed at a number of festivals in America including the
SXSW festival in Austin
and the San Diego Street
Scene festival.
During
December 2005, the band played at London's historic Astoria
. This whole performance was filmed and the
band released it on DVD called
In
Operation, the performance is in front of a hometown crowd,
features all the tracks on Hard-Fi's 750,000 selling, #1 debut
album
Stars of CCTV, at the time brand new track "You And
Me", which was later a B-Side to "Suburban Knights", and the band's
version of "
Seven Nation Army" by
The White Stripes. It also comes
backed with CCTVersions – an exclusive CD which features dubbed
versions of album tracks, produced by guests including
Roots Manuva and
DJ
Wrongtom.
In December 2005, the group released an iTunes exclusive EP
featuring five of their songs played during their sessions at AOL
studios. The EP was called
Sessions@AOL and featured the
songs
Gotta Reason,
Cash
Machine,
Hard to Beat,
Unnecessary
Trouble and
Better Do Better.
In February 2006, Hard-Fi played the Hammersmith Palais as part of
the run of NME Awards shows with regular early touring partners
Boy Kill Boy.
Hard-Fi played a packed out 'secret' headlining slot on the
Leftfield Stage on 23 June 2007 at Glastonbury. Although the band
were still mixing the record at the time the crowd got to hear "We
Need Love," "
Can't Get
Along " and "
Suburban Knights"
before anyone else. The band also included a host of favourites
from their debut album
Stars of CCTV.The band played a
series of sold-out, intimate dates later in July 2007 previewing
the record. This event was found so exciting by the
UK Festival Awards they actually
nominated the event in the category for Most Memorable
Moment.
Each concert from the band's December Uk Tour was recorded in its
entirety on audio CD which could be ordered online through Concert
Live or bought at the venue for £20. The CD was titled
Once Upon a Time in December.
The first 1000 people to pay received signed copies, while
available to all payers came a bundle of the next single "
I Shall Overcome" which included an
exclusive download of the song as well as versions on vinyl, Maxi
CD and a collectors' CD. All were delivered free of charge on day
of release 10 March 2008.
Discography
Studio albums
Media
For
Cash Machine the band released an
X-rated version of the video for people to
download on to their cell phones, featuring scenes that include
nudity. They also have their own
video
podcast, which is known as 'Hard-Fi: Rockin' the City', that
can be downloaded from
their official website. In the first episode the
bandmates discuss how they formed, and the rise of their successful
album
Stars of CCTV. They also discuss becoming
increasingly more recognised, playing huge gigs with Green Day at
the Milton Keynes Bowl, their home-town of Staines, and how it has
influenced their music style. This talk is coupled with clips of
some of Hard-Fi's music videos such as "Hard to Beat", "
Cash Machine", "
Tied Up Too Tight"
and "
Living for the Weekend".
Twenty episodes have been released, so far, on
iTunes. They are also available to view on their
MySpace and their channel on
Youtube.
In 2007, the band's podcast,
Hard-Fi: Rockin' the City,
was nominated for 'Best Podcast' at the
Digital Music Awards. The song
"Unnecessary Trouble" is featured prominently in the
2008 teen comedy
Charlie Bartlett while "Hard to Beat" is
featured in the 2006 film
Employee of the
Month.
Advertising
- Gotta Reason is featured on the soundtrack for FIFA 06.
Television appearances
Hard-Fi have appeared twice on
Popworld
interviewed by
Simon Amstell, in one
of these interviews it is found out that
Daniel Radcliffe, who plays the role of
Harry Potter in the
Harry Potter series, is a fan of
Hard-Fi's music.
The band have also done an episode of 'Take Over' for
MTV2 where an artist is allowed to take over the
channel for 1 hour and play some of their favourite tracks,
including material from the likes of The Clash and
Eminem.
Richard and drummer Steve Kemp also appeared on
stv's Entertainment Now programme discussing
Once
Upon A Time In The West, its origins and the process of its
creation.
To
promote themselves in the United States
, the band performed Hard to
Beat on "The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno" on June 13, 2006.
The band appeared as guests on the
Friday Night Project on 10 August 2007
to promote their single Suburban Knights.
They did not play
live in Series 5, due to missing their flight back into the
UK
from Ibiza
, and were
therefore the first band to mime on the show.
As well as
The Automatic, Hard-Fi is
the only band to have appeared twice on
Soccer
AM as the Guest Band, excluding
Razorlight who have appeared in an aired episode
and in the show's pilot episode.
The band describe the day as "a real privilege. We played in front
of a lot of people and learned a lot. We have a lot of good
memories and new fans from these shows as well".
On November 23, 2007, Hard-Fi appeared on
Friday Night with Jonathan
Ross where they performed a live rendition of
"Tonight".
On December 1, 2007, the band performed the song
"Television" on
Saturday
Night Live.
On February 15, 2008, Hard-Fi appeared on Al Murray's Happy Hour,
performing their single '
I Shall
Overcome' and a cover of
Queen's
'
Another One Bites The
Dust'.
On
July 4, Hard-Fi appeared on
Live From Abbey Road where they
performed Tied Up Too Tight and We Need Love.
References
External links
and a Carling beer
commercial in the United Kingdom. It has also been featured
on the Winter Olympics Special of
BBC's Top
Gear and Inside Wayne Rooney, a Sky One documentary featuring
Paddy McGuinness.
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