Biography
Hard-Fi are the product of their suburban West London environment; the sound of twenty-something gun-slingers on the minimum wage. It's the sound of a band weaned on the heady concrete glamour of The Clash, Dexys, Curtis Mayfield, and Happy Mondays. In love and in debt - the raw materials required to soundtrack a life of box-fresh Adidas, Berwick Street vinyl, and the black economy.Back in October 2004, Hard-Fi pressed up 500 copies of their debut mini-album ?Stars Of CCTV?. Recorded in the band?s beloved ?Cherry Lips? studio, (a former 24 hour cab office on a bleak Staines industrial estate), it was recorded for ?300 worth of rent and the price of a second hand computer: the result was a DIY masterpiece. Released on Necessary Records, ?Stars Of CCTV? sold out within weeks, seminal US producer Rick Rubin was on the phone pronouncing the album ?a landmark record? and suddenly Hard-Fi gate crashed onto MTV, Radio 1 and the top of every major label?s ?Must Sign? list. They chose Atlantic Records and began recording the full length, no holds barred version of ?Stars Of CCTV?. In stark contrast, it was just two years ago, following a family crisis, that Hard-Fi front man Richard Archer found himself sucked back into his hometown of Staines ? an urban wasteland of chain pubs, fake Burberry, disenfranchised youth and Friday night violent free-for-alls. Quickly Archer began writing Stars Of CCTV, reflecting his feelings of entrapment in a satellite ghost town bereft of soul, style or sobriety. Just as Terry Hall channelled the broken spirit of 80?s Coventry into the likes of ?Ghost Town? and ?Nite Club?, Archer?s work threw up dark, dubby shapes and dissatisfied lyrics, gloriously rife with modern day glitz, small-town glamour and concrete hedonism. Soon, Richard began gathering together a group of likeminded souls: Lancastrian drummer Steve Kemp was an old friend, guitarist Ross Phillips worked in the hi-fi shop Richard would go to and pretend he wanted to buy equipment simply so he could listen to his latest demos on the best systems, and bassist Kai Stephens was nabbed from his job at Rent-O-Kill, where he was ?sick to death of killing things?. Hard-Fi was born. From DIY masterpiece to major label debut, the recording process for ?Stars Of CCTV? has remained exactly the same. Despite a considerably more generous budget on offer this time around, the band insisted on returning to Cherry Lips, unwilling to turn their backs on the gritty surroundings from which their sound had seeped.
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