NIPP: Hard-Fi

Hard-Fi

Artist Website	Bio
HARD-FI “I wanna be successful.” Richard Archer’s dark eyes are ablaze, the bloody throat-gristle of modern success clenched in his teeth. “I don’t see the point in being just another fuckin’ indie band, I wanna sell records in the States. I’m not in competition with Razorlight and The Killers—I like those bands. I’m in competition with fuckin’ Eminem. What’s the point of being parochial and small-time? You’ve got to think big.” ‘Big’? Surely he means ‘bigger’? “The smartest new kids on the inner-city tower block”, they’re saying. “A roar of defiance from below-the-breadline Britain,” they slaver. “Hard-Fi speak to the heart of and soul of young Britain more poignantly than a billion Fat Tom From Keanes ever could,” they swoon. The debut single gets showered with ‘Track Of The Week’ plaudits, Zane Lowe pronounces an unmastered copy of the second single ‘the hottest record in the world today’, Rick Rubin’s on the phone declaring the debut album ‘groundbreaking’. Fanfared by the dark-hearted, gritty dub-pop of their self-financed ‘Stars Of CCTV’ mini-album, Hard-Fi are already the best new band of 2005, now it’s time to take the knackered council flat lift to the top of the charts… The beginnings of this Cindarella Of Suburbia tale couldn’t be more humble. In the grey dawn of the New Skint Millenium, Richard Archer was sucked back to his hometown of Staines—the armpit of Middlesex, a wasteland of All Bar Ones, Heathrow backwash and fake Burberry—crushed by the collapse of his former band Contempo and the death of his father. “I moved back to Staines because I ran out of money and it was quite a shock,” he says. “There’s no record shops, there’s no decent pubs, there’s no venues, there’s no decent clothes shops. Look around, it’s quite pleasant but if you’re a young person living here then you’re into a certain type of music—chart house—and a certain fashion, and if you’re not into that there is nothing here for you. Here, you can’t get home if you’re out in central London after eleven. There’s no night bus, there’s no late train, you have to get a cab if you can find one and that’ll charge you eighty quid to get home from central London. A lot of people live like that.” As The Specials found Coventry in Thatcher’s 80s, Richard found Staines in Blair’s 00’s—a satellite ghost town bereft of soul, style or sobriety. So inevitably the music he began to write took on the dark, dubby shapes of the grainy early-80s—’Ghost Town’, Joy Division, ‘Sandanista’—spattered with the modern-day Ritzy glitz of Stardust and all things funk punk. In 2002 Richard gathered together a gang of fellow Dole Desperados—Lancastrian drum-bruiser Steve Kemp was a mate of Contempo’s producer, 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 “tired of the constant death”. Hiring a local industrial unit as their studio Hard-Fi recorded ‘Stars Of CCTV’ for about

Bio

HARD-FI

“I wanna be successful.” Richard Archer’s dark eyes are ablaze, the bloody throat-gristle of modern success clenched in his teeth. “I don’t see the point in being just another fuckin’ indie band, I wanna sell records in the States. I’m not in competition with Razorlight and The Killers—I like those bands. I’m in competition with fuckin’ Eminem. What’s the point of being parochial and small-time? You’ve got to think big.”

‘Big’? Surely he means ‘bigger’? “The smartest new kids on the inner-city tower block”, they’re saying. “A roar of defiance from below-the-breadline Britain,” they slaver. “Hard-Fi speak to the heart of and soul of young Britain more poignantly than a billion Fat Tom From Keanes ever could,” they swoon. The debut single gets showered with ‘Track Of The Week’ plaudits, Zane Lowe pronounces an unmastered copy of the second single ‘the hottest record in the world today’, Rick Rubin’s on the phone declaring the debut album ‘groundbreaking’. Fanfared by the dark-hearted, gritty dub-pop of their self-financed ‘Stars Of CCTV’ mini-album, Hard-Fi are already the best new band of 2005, now it’s time to take the knackered council flat lift to the top of the charts…

The beginnings of this Cindarella Of Suburbia tale couldn’t be more humble. In the grey dawn of the New Skint Millenium, Richard Archer was sucked back to his hometown of Staines—the armpit of Middlesex, a wasteland of All Bar Ones, Heathrow backwash and fake Burberry—crushed by the collapse of his former band Contempo and the death of his father. “I moved back to Staines because I ran out of money and it was quite a shock,” he says. “There’s no record shops, there’s no decent pubs, there’s no venues, there’s no decent clothes shops. Look around, it’s quite pleasant but if you’re a young person living here then you’re into a certain type of music—chart house—and a certain fashion, and if you’re not into that there is nothing here for you. Here, you can’t get home if you’re out in central London after eleven. There’s no night bus, there’s no late train, you have to get a cab if you can find one and that’ll charge you eighty quid to get home from central London. A lot of people live like that.”

As The Specials found Coventry in Thatcher’s 80s, Richard found Staines in Blair’s 00’s—a satellite ghost town bereft of soul, style or sobriety. So inevitably the music he began to write took on the dark, dubby shapes of the grainy early-80s—’Ghost Town’, Joy Division, ‘Sandanista’—spattered with the modern-day Ritzy glitz of Stardust and all things funk punk.

In 2002 Richard gathered together a gang of fellow Dole Desperados—Lancastrian drum-bruiser Steve Kemp was a mate of Contempo’s producer, 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 “tired of the constant death”. Hiring a local industrial unit as their studio Hard-Fi recorded ‘Stars Of CCTV’ for about