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Richard Archer, Hard-Fi's strikingly handsome and infectiously determined founder, songwriter and front man, calls their sound "kind of tough and uncompromising". Their mini-album 'Stars Of CCTV', released in October last year, took critics and listeners by storm with the band then witnessing an expanded, full-length version entering the album charts at number 6 in July and being short-listed for this year's Mercury Music Prize. The fourth single from that album, 'Living For The Weekend', will hit the high streets on September 19th, and the four-piece have just recorded a new song, 'Help Me Please', for the latest War Child charity compilation. The suburban survivors talk to Gigwise about how they fought their way out of cultural dead end and hometown Staines.
Gigwise is in a queue at London's Atlantic Records eager to spend our allotted twenty minutes talking to one of the hottest British bands around. By the time we arrive, their room has acquired the usual detrius of half-full coffee cups and curling sandwiches inhabiting the low table, around which the endearingly polite foursome in jeans and T-shirts are making themselves comfortable on generous leather sofas. "The one thing we wanna say is we made this happen ourselves," states Richard emphatically in his Home Counties accent. "No one's going to come and pluck you out of where you are. You've got to make something happen. Make your own record, get it out there, get it heard."
"I'm surprised about successes. I've been in a band before, and I've been through the wringer. I've been trying to get this thing together for three years, after the last thing went wrong. Three years of having no money! Three years of trying to prove myself! It was very frustrating, " he adds. But Hard-Fi's unbroken enthusiasm and sheer persistence were eventually rewarded, and time proved to be on their side. "Maybe fate played a hand," says the charismatic 28-year-old more soothingly. "The record came out at a serendipitous moment. Perhaps people waited for something new. I think they waited for a band who writes cool, decent, credible, innovative pop records."
Pop records? "Yeah! Like 'Satisfaction' is a pop record. Like 'Rock the Casbah' is a pop record. Like 'Slim Shady' is a pop record." He tells us when they were making the record they didn't see themselves as part of the London scene, "like what's the hot, new sound. We wanted to write music that talks about our lives, our friends' lives and things that move us. The fact that people were relating to what we're saying and buying into what we had to offer, is very important to us and has given us more confidence. We almost feel vindicated," adding, "we still feel like outsiders a bit, like Cinderella at the ball. We feel we gatecrashed the party. People are going 'Who the hell are these guys?'"
People should know by now they're Richard Archer, Ross Phillips (guitars), Kai Stephens (bass) and Steve Kemp (drums). Tipping their hat to mid-period Clash, Hard-Fi irresistably fuse elements of punk, funk and dub with lyrics dealing with suburban existence, absent friends, being skint, girls or Friday nights. And it's the inherent simplicity of these images that makes the songs so effective.Hard-Fi's meteoric rise, culminating in their debut album's Mercury Prize nomination (which eventually went to Antony and the Johnsons), left Richard clearly flattered: "Think about how we made the record! We made it in a lock-up, and our recording budget was probably Coldplay's macrobiotic yoghurt budget." He lets the laughter die down, then says proudly: "And we're up there with them."
Critics assailed some of the albums short-listed as having been included to make up the numbers, among them Hard-Fi's. "That's bullshit", states Richard matter-of-factly. "How can they say that? If they wanted numbers why not make them up with Kasabian? There're always people in the press who like to have a little rant and rave."
Confidence's a pre-requisite for a front man, and Richard's also an eloquent, media-savvy talker, sometimes obviously to his band's frustration. Kai leans forward. Richard: "You wanted to say something?" Kai: "Yeah, yeah, yeah... What you've just said."
On stage he's a natural. He transforms his relentless energy into an intense performance exuding a brooding sexiness, scanning the crowd with piercing eyes under dark, rich eyebrows. "A stage is quite cathartic," explains Richard. "You can just be. You can let go and release a valve. I feel the stage is our domain. No one encroaches on it... Though I don't mind if fans want to come and jump off. That's alright" he adds looking at the others who give an approving "Yeah."
The forthcoming single, 'Living For The Weekend', relives those Friday nights after a frustrating week that everybody has experienced. Asked why they haven't released one of the most talked about and touching songs on the album, 'Move On Now', Richard reveals there's talk there might be another single to come from the album. "That song was written shortly after my last band broke up, and a month after that, my father died. (Sadly, Richard's mother has also recently passed away.) I was in a pretty bad space, and I found myself back at the family home," he reflects. "You look out of the window and you see planes taking off from Heathrow. You just see the red lights. You'd rather be anywhere other than where you are. And there's your escape route, every ninety seconds. You sit there wondering where they're going, wondering if you could be on it. But you can't get near it." Richard once said he thinks Hard-Fi have got what it takes to be the next major British band. Confronted with that he's unsurprisingly down-to-earth: "I think we can be. If I didn't think that, I wouldn't be doing this. Some of the best bands ever have been British. They've all taken a sound and introduced something new to it or twisted it. It's like a British tradition. That's what we've done."
"The album's been successful, but not as successful as we want it to be. Number 6: Great! To get to number 6 in that week, we sold 30 thousand records. James Blunt sold 100 thousand. He was at number 1. We feel we've got to keep striving and working hard and get out there," says Richard with a very focussed expression on his face. "We wanna be doing that! We wanna be up there competing with the big boys, the likes of Enimen and 50 Cent! We don't see the point of being a big fish in a small pond in Britain. We wanna see the rest of the world! We wanna make up our own mind! I'm not afraid of failing and trying."
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