Hard-Fi!

Just how did Hard-Fi become the success they are today? Well, this is how...

1977
»Richard Archer is born a premature baby. He does not stay this way.

1995
»After several years mooching around Staines doing nothing much at all, Richard studies music at Kingston University where we can tell you for a fact he is taught by a man called Steve who has David Bowie's autograph tattooed on his arm. Don't ask us how we know this.

1997
»Richard forms a band called Contempo who are almost immediately signed to a big record label and have their singles produced by Mick Jones from The Clash. Brilliant!

»Listen to some Contempo here: www.myspace.com/thisiscontempo

2000
»Not Brilliant. Before Contempo get a chance to make their album they're cruelly dropped by their record label (who are probably evil). Boo!

2002
»After two years of being on the dole, Richard decides the best thing to do is form a new band called Hard-Fi. Why not, eh? Richard takes his new demos to a posh hi-fi shop so he can hear what they might sound like when rich people listen to them. Working in that shop is Ross Phillips and, you guessed it, he joins the band on guitar alongside Richard's mate Steve on drums and Kai on bass (who had previously worked as a rat catcher - or whatever the modern day equivalent of a rat catcher is).

2004
»Hard-Fi record a mini album in a disused cab office named 'Cherry Lips studio'. Five hundred copies of the mini album are made and lots of important music people declare it brilliant.

HARD-FI HAIKU They sang 'Hard To Beat' But we played them at Jenga And they were rubbish

2005
»The band sign to Atlantic records which releases a full-length version of their album 'Stars Of CCTV'. It is nominated for a Mercury Music prize but loses to a transvestite from America. Boo! Again.

»Richard is romantically linked to not-at-all-ugly actress Scarlett Johansson but this turns out to be a made-up newspaper lie.

2006
»The album climbs to number one in the UK which is far better than winning a prize. And the band manage to sell out five consecutive nights at Brixton Academy, which makes us think it probably would've been easier just to play one big gig instead, but we're no experts.

2007
»Hard-Fi build their own studio in Staines so they can make a new album. They come out of the studio in June to play a secret gig at Glastonbury but then go straight back in again.

»All of the artwork and marketing for their new album, 'Once Upon A Time In The West', is deliberately sparse and 'situationist' in style, meaning it's just some writing on a blank square. Lots of people say this is rubbish but top designer Peter Saville calls it "a 'White Album' for the digital culture". So all those people are wrong.

»Hard-Fi give a video interview for 4Music where they talk about Castle Grayskull and eating spiders.

And that's all you need to know.