Hard-Fi are an English indie rock band, formed in 2003 in Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey. The band consists of Richard Archer, Ross Phillips, Kai Stephens and Steve Kemp.
members: Richard Archer
formed in: Staines-upon-Thames
labels: Necessary Records, Atlantic Records
genres: alternative rock
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While Archer was making demos to produce an album, he went into the Staines hi-fi shop where Ross Phillips worked, simply so he could listen to his latest demos on the shop's better equipment. Philips apparently asked Archer who had played guitar on his demos and Archer said that it was himself. Phillips said it was "shit" and was therefore recruited to play guitar for the new group. Steve Kemp was already an old friend of Archer, while it took Kai Stephens little persuasion to leave his job as a "pest killer" at Rentokil. When Stephens played guitar before joining Hard-Fi, he liked to copy chords from bands such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd who are two of his favourite artists along with The Clash and hip-hop acts such as Run-DMC and...
Hard-Fi's lyrics are based mostly on working class life, the band themselves coming from a self-sufficient suburban lifestyle in Staines. This is 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.
"Hard-Fi" is the name given to the sound produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry, a reggae and dub artist, at his Black Ark recording studio. Being admirers of Perry's work, the band named 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."
Underlined songs have their story further down.