Hard-Fi cut to the chase with second album.

With album number two due in September, Richard Archer and co return to the same studio set-up to repeat the success of their 800,000-selling debut, Stars Of CCTV

by Stuart Clarke

In following up their multi-platinum debut Stars Of CCTV, the obvious choice for Staines, most successful export would have been to jet off to LA, hire some world renowned studio steeped in history and call on the latest production big shot to tell them how to really write a hit. Instead, Hard-Fi returned to the cramped Cab-office-turned-studio where they recorded their debut, bought the room next door and got to work.

"We started looking into going elsewhere, but firstly we really didn't need to do it anywhere else and the amount of money we would have been looking at was absurd," says frontman and songwriter Richard Archer. "Money's not everything, but it is most things!"

The resulting album, Once Upon A Time In The West, is a confident set that advances the band's ambitions without leaning on the overdone, or Hollywood gloss that coats so many follow-ups.

Co-produced by Archer with Wolsey White, a friend of the band who also worked on their debut, its only extravagance is the addition of Mark "Spike" Stent, who mixed the album after previously working with the band on a new mix of their Top 20 hit, Cash Machine.

"Rich has a pretty clear vision of what he wants," says Atlantic director of A&R, Hugo Bedford, who signed the band to the label over dinner at a curry house in Peckham on December 6, 2005. "It is Richard's vision the whole way and if you start bringing in a producer it stymies that vision. Rich and Spike both got on well and so we brought him in to mix the album. He also popped into the studio a couple of times too just to help out with acoustics and little things."