Interview: Hi Frisco

The London based duo Hi Frisco, compromised of lyricist Henry Eastham and producer Felix Rashman, have been grinding for several years in the build-up to their debut album. We spoke to Felix, the day before the release of the exceptional Goodbye, Blue Monday.

Your new album Goodbye, Blue Monday is set to be released tomorrow, how does it feel? 

A bit bizarre. It’s been a long time in the making, technically we finished it in March. I think the idea initially was for an early release but obviously the world being what it is at the moment everything kind of went out the window and we kind of sat on it. We’ve lived with the songs for so long it almost feels like everyone else should know them like we know them. 

From your formation in 2017 what has been the process to now releasing your new album?

Kind of all over the shop. I’ve got a studio in East London and that’s where we do a lot of the work and because it’s mine and we are not going to studios to do things we kind of have free range to do what we want, when we want so it was a process of just experimenting and trying things out. The mantra for the whole process was don’t play it too safe. I think we might have gone overboard in the amount of things we stuck into the songs but that was a really fun learning process. I wouldn’t be surprised if, come album two (or whatever we do next) it will be a lot more stripped back in a way just because we threw everything at the wall and I think most of it stuck. It feels like a kid in nursery and you see all these toys and say: great, let’s try them all. 

Going back to 2017 when did you realise that you guys were going to work together?

We were friends, we figured this out the other day, for about three years before hand. Henry was in another band and I worked in the industry as an engineering producer for other bands and I think it was one of those where we didn’t want to mix what we were doing. His band had a thing going on and I was doing my own thing. Then he left that band and I had a free bit of time and he brought me some demos. We agreed to try it out and see where it went. We found that we actually worked quite well together even when it came to writing lyrics with a bit of cross-pollination. We just kind of do a bit of everything. 

How did you decide on the name Hi Frisco?

We had a strong belief that if you look too hard at a band’s name it disintegrates. If you put it under any spotlight most of them look really shit. [not to single anyone out] We were always alright with what we picked, at the end of the day people will just get used to it. Henry actually was the one who discovered it. He was reading ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and he came to me and said this is about the only happy moment in the book so maybe we just take that. Weirdly just having the H and the F being Henry and Felix it almost felt like an amalgam of our names. After time band names lose their meaning. 

What would you say is your defining feature as a band? 

I think, and this is more blowing Henry’s trumpet than my own, smart use of melody and chords. It could easily verge onto being excessive, the amount of chords he uses in songs but they are actually quite smart pop songs. I thought we did things in quite and intelligent way. The way we bridge stuff and build it makes it feel more involved and it flows better. Well considered pop music with an element of weirdness and I think the weirdness is important, that’s the side that I [Felix] bring to it. 

How do you decide if a song is weird enough?

It’s easier to say that something isn’t weird enough than it is to say it’s too weird. We are not afraid to put it out how we feel comfortable I guess we just have to trust our natural instincts that our weirdest stuff isn’t too weird. There is a track on the album called ‘Wallflowers’ in the which the outro had eight different guitar parts and they were all doing very different things. Going back in they were all amazing and were we struggled was deciding what to keep because they are like all your children. You don't want to cast them on the side but sometimes you have to to make it work. I think the only way of doing it is being ourselves. Big influences of our are Dave Fridman and the flaming lips and MGMT which is a perfect mix of super weird but also quite catchy pop.  

Do you have a favourite track or is it like asking you to pick a favourite child? 

The one that I didn’t think would turn out as well as it did was a track called ‘Holiday’ and that one was the zen of us throwing everything at the wall. It was too big for the computer to handle at one point and we had to get a new computer. In the end it actually turned out really well and a lot of that is credit to John Catlin who mixed it. Equally I think it’s just kind of a bit mad, it goes everywhere, the structure is quite odd and the outro is mad involving percussion played on wine bottles. And the final track which is a reprise of the first ones because it’s the last thing we did and it feels like a book end, they both feel like book ends. It has a nice evocative feeling to it. 

You talk about book ends, do you see the album as a story? How do you want people to feel about it? 

My two analogies is that to me it feels a bit like Alice in Wonderland and I know that’s a cliché but it feels like you are going it a hyper real world. The sounds are hyper- real, they are very, not psychedelic I hate that word, they are kind of bright and… psychedelic. With the two book ends it feels like you go into the world and come out of it. The other analogy is that it feels cartoon and muppety. I have this weird cenesthesia where things feel very cartoon and hyper real. I feel like we use the song writing and the collage of all those different colours and textures to have as our own therapeutic world to get certain issues out in a childlike innocent way. 

You’ve already been played on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio London so do you have your sights set on anything for 2021?

Any semblance of normality to return? We would like to do some gigs, I think a big thing for us would be doing album two we just love creating. We’ve been doing things since which will come out hopefully after the album. It would be nice just to sit down and have that feeling of freedom just to create. I think we could have finished an album before the end of 2021 but whether it will be released I don't know. 

Goodbye Blue Monday is OUT NOW.

Listen on Spotify / Apple Music / Amazon

Words and Interview: Amelia Dinsdale