Emerging from the mean streets of Staines in 2005, Hard-Fi’s self-produced debut album ‘Stars Of CCTV’ blasted into the charts thanks to its ska-tinged tales of suburban grit, frustration and Friday night defiance. The figures alone were staggering: they quickly sold over 1 million copies worldwide; top 15 hits for all five singles including the glitterball dancefloor smash ‘Hard To Beat’; hitting No. 1 after six full months in the album chart, and narrowly missing out on the Mercury Prize.
The band stormed on into 2007 with second album ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’ which also hit No. 1, spawned the Top 10 hit ‘Suburban Knights’ and prompted a rapturously received Glastonbury headline set on the Leftfield stage.
When Hard-Fi reconvened in 2008 to work on new tracks such as ‘Fire In The House’ and ‘Love Song’, their sound drew on a rock ‘n’ roll rootsiness combined with a lingering fascination with the dance NRG that’d driven ‘Hard To Beat’.
So emerged the deceptively upbeat, clap-along ‘Killer Sounds’ - a dance-rock record with depth. “It’s more worldly,” says Rich (lead vocals), “it’s coming from a more confident, happier place, it’s more assured than anything we’ve done so far. We’ve found ourselves a little bit this time and we can move on. Now I think we make perfect sense to what’s out there.”