The Hilltop Hoods began the hard road to fame a good 10 years ago, and have gone from strength to strength, winning awards, obtaining platinum albums, playing around the country, performing for a television audience, as well as opening the doors for more Aussie hiphop artists to jump in the spotlight and shine. But their laid back manner and modest nature contradicts their dedication to their art.
After performing with a string quartet at the ARIAs, the band decided they wanted to do something a little different from the norm. Possibly inspired by the Simpson’s Lollapoolza episode where, in a stoned haze Cyprus Hill decide to play with the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hilltop Hoods have decided to record the Hard Road with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and release it as the Hard Road Restrung.
“We were approached by the ASO to do some work with them over a year ago,” Pressure explains, “but due to time constraints we had to turn them down, but that’s where the idea came from originally to use a String Quartet. So instead of us doing their project, we offered ours to them.” They decided to use a string quartet for their ARIA performance to give their fans and the wider television audience something different.
“We had a local (Adelaide) guy who works for the ASO, Jamie Messenger, to compose a score for ‘The Hard Road’ for us to perform just with a string quartet. We were really happy with his work, and got him to compose scores for the rest of ‘The Hard Road’ album for a String Quartet and we took it on tour over the New Year break. That went really well, so we got Jamie to re-score it for a 32-piece orchestra for an album.”
Well, that answers “how”, but what I really wanted to know was why? Why did the Hilltop Hoods, who are probably the last people you’d expect to form a union with any kind of orchestra, do a Metallica and record their album with one? Have they gone mad? “This is something we wanted to do ourselves as artists, from an artistic perspective, just to branch out and try something different for the remix album, but we’re going to go back to making straight up hiphop after this,” Pressure reassure me.
I wondered if there was any special preparation they do with the orchestra for their one off show that launches the album. “Being that the people who play for the ASO are all professional musicians – they play 40 to 50 hours a week – we’re only doing one rehearsal with them because that’s all it takes,” he explains. “They take the sheet music and take it home and learn it off by heart. We get together the day before for a dress rehearsal and take it from there.” But he quickly qualifies it with, “We (the Hilltops) rehearse our side of things, plan it and put it all together well beforehand, but we only get one dress rehearsal with the orchestra.”
Pressure is aware that there will be some resistance to the show. “There will be some people who will turn their nose up at it and it’s not going to be their thing,” he says, “but I think many will come along to check it out and will leave pretty impressed with what they’ve seen because this doesn’t happen very often. It’s going to be a bit of a spectacle!” Unfortunately it’s only songs from The Hard Road, so there won’t be any HornBleed Section, but there is one new track that’s been recorded as a bonus song.
Of course, this means their next ‘proper’ album probably won’t be making it to stores until next year. “The next album is just started to get underway. Suffa and Debris have a few beats, and we’ve written a couple of verses here and there, but we haven’t actually started recording the new album at all,” Pressure confirms. “We’re just putting ideas down so it’s kind of on hold for the moment because of the remix album. The night of the launch we’re also filming for a DVD, so we’ve got a fair bit on our plate for this year.”