There is a version of the High Fade story that could have gone differently. The Edinburgh trio came up busking street corners, received major label interest, watched industry people circle, and came out the other side with their catalogue and their independence. With a second album, Twice As Nice, due May 8th via their own imprint RPN Records, and a 50-date North American tour kicking off this spring, including a stop at Le Belmont in Montreal on May 21st, they seem less interested in talking about what they avoided than in what they are still building.
Vocalist and guitarist Harry Valentino has been building it for a while. The band, completed by bassist Oliver Sentence and drummer Heath Campbell, came up playing the streets of Edinburgh, and Valentino credits that period with shaping nearly everything about how they perform now. “Busking really was the building blocks of the show we have now,” he says. “Learning how to actually perform live and engage an audience. A lot of the crowd work was all developed on the streets of Edinburgh.” It went beyond stagecraft, though. “We always go and test out the new material in the street to see if it translates the same.”
Over 1,500 shows later, that instinct still holds. But somewhere along the way, the scale shifted. Valentino marks a specific turning point: the Life’s Too Fast album tour, where the UK run sold out entirely and the US dates were close behind. “That was a crazy moment that made us realize we weren’t just a band playing on the street anymore.” The broader feeling is harder to pin down. “A lot of the work that we do is still a lot of work. It just gets easier because you get better at handling situations, you get faster at working together on the road, but you also learn more as you go.”
As a three-piece playing music that pulls from funk, rock, disco, jazz, punk, metal, and soul without collapsing under the weight of those influences, their approach to arrangement is quieter and more considered than the live show might suggest. “When it comes to the style of music that we’re playing, everybody has to be creative with their parts and know when to fill the space and when to leave space as well,” Valentino explains. “A lot of bands think they will sound bigger if everybody is doing crazy amounts of stuff, but sometimes that massive sound comes from actually being tight as a band and listening to what everyone else is playing. I don’t like to say less is more, but sometimes less is more and sometimes more is more.” The genre-blending, he says, is not something they sit down and design. “The balance is kept by the way that everybody has their moment to do their thing and nobody is fighting for space in the song. A lot of it comes from how much music we listen to and how different all of that really is.”
The live show is what most people come back to when they talk about High Fade, often reaching for words like physical, confrontational, relentless. Valentino sees the new record as the closest they have come to capturing it. “Live definitely has its own special thing and it’s really hard to capture in a studio,” he says, “but I feel like the new album is the perfect representation of what we are like live, but also shows there’s attention to detail and that we care about the music that we put out.”
Twice As Nice was recorded between East Iris Studios in Nashville and RAK Studios in London, somehow carved out across a year in which the band played 276 gigs. Nashville, Valentino says, was equal parts thrilling and unsettling. “There’s so much history in Nashville. Everybody there is just an amazing musician. It’s very hard to find a bad one. We were really exposed to a lot of different styles of music but also different work ethics and learned a lot from the people we were surrounded by.” Back in London, returning to RAK where they had made the debut, the approach had shifted. “We came at it very differently, with much more of a pre-production element in mind. I think it really did change how we see the band progressing and going forward with this new sound.”
He is straightforward about where Life’s Too Fast fell short, from his perspective. “It was great, but for me personally, I felt like it was rushed,” he says. “Twice As Nice is a more accurate representation of what we actually do. We were able to push our creative boundaries a lot more. I had a lot more to say on this album and a lot more message to bring to people. Lyrically this album has a lot more of my own voice instead of, I guess, what I thought other people think I should sound like.”
The DIY ethic that runs through everything High Fade do is not a brand position. It started with a £13.50 payout. “I remember getting ripped off at my first ever gig where the promoter took 90% of the ticket sales,” Valentino says. “From that moment, I think there was a feeling of: I don’t want my band or my bandmates to be taken advantage of again.” He has watched enough of the industry since then to feel the frustration has only compounded. “A lot of the deals we see from friends in the industry really are just taking advantage of artists, whether it’s creatively, monetarily, through business means, or just straight-out control. The music industry has become a very bland space and I feel that musicians need to start trying to take back ownership of the art that they make and hold labels, agents, and managers accountable.”
RPN Records, the band’s own imprint, the name short for Rippin’ Records, is where that frustration found a practical outlet. “You don’t need a record deal to have an amazing life in the music industry,” Valentino says. “You need to have persistence, effort, education, and make sure that you trust the people that you work with.” He does not dress it up as simple. “I hate to say it, but a lot of people aren’t prepared for the level of work that is required to try and get somewhere independently. A lot of people are very naive to how it works and what actually moves the needle. For us, remaining independent is not only important, but we also want to be able to help other bands and show that there is a different way of doing this, a modern way of doing this that doesn’t require handing your art over to a record label, a crazed manager, or an agent that doesn’t care about your music.”
Ask him what success looks like from here and the answer has nothing to do with chart positions. “We’re not here to buy a number one spot on a Billboard chart,” he says. “I think the genres they try to put on these chart things don’t even exist yet anyway, and a lot of the new songs, people are going to be wondering how, why, when, and where we came up with all this.” What he actually wants is more modest and more stubborn at the same time. “Success looks like being able to tour as much as possible, to bigger audiences, to more people, and spreading the message to other bands that it can be done. It will be done nd that hopefully one day we can show that being an independent band in today’s world still matters and it’s still worth giving it your best shot. We’re not here to buy the number one spot on a billboard chart. I think the genres they try and person on these chart things don’t even exist yet anyway, and there are a lot of the new songs people are gonna be wondering how, why, when and where we came up with all this. I think for us success looks like keep on doing what we’re doing.”
Twice As Nice is out May 8th on RPN Records. High Fade play Le Belmont in Montreal on May 21st.
