Hilltop Hoods

The previous year they had released their fourth LP, The Hard Road, and armed with the singles ‘Clown Prince’, ‘The Hard Road’ and ‘What A Great Night’, it debuted at number one and reached gold sales status in just its second week. However, The Hard Road’s success didn’t make the Hoods infallible. So in early 2007, when they announced their next project would be The Hard Road: Restrung – a collaboration with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra – plenty of diehard fans had reservations about this seemingly incongruous match-up.

Up until that stage, the band’s production predominantly consisted of samples and programming, so it remained to be seen whether a symphony orchestra could complement the broad Aussie accents of MCs Suffa and Pressure. But working with the ASO wasn’t just a huge opportunity for the boys from Adelaide, it proved a successful venture both commercially and artistically.

“There’s a list of things somewhere on the internet that musicians should never do,” says Suffa, AKA Matt Lambert. “‘Think that your album’s going to sound better with a symphony orchestra’ is on the list,” he laughs. “Our only concern was that people knew we weren’t being self-indulgent – which it was to a degree – but that it’s something we genuinely wanted to do, and that we thought orchestral arrangement would lend something really special to the music.”

In contrast to a traditional remix album, which involves giving songs to a range of producers to redo them however they like, the ‘restrung’ method let the Hoods flex further creativity within their songs. This made it an especially appealing format to revisit for their latest two records, 2012’s Drinking From The Sun and 2014’s Walking Under Stars.These two releases were conceived as separate instalments in an interconnected sequence, and the forthcoming Drinking From The Sun, Walking Under Stars Restrung LP (again featuring the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra) completes the project.

“Every album we’ve dropped since The Hard Road – State Of The Art, Walking Under Stars, Drinking From The Sun – people that were fans of The Hard Road: Restrung have asked us if we’re going do it with this album,” Lambert says. “We thought the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone was great. And the fact that Drinking From The Sun and Walking Under Stars were companion pieces, to bring them under this one umbrella of being remixed with an orchestra joins them together, like they were sort of meant to be.”

Hailing a record as an orchestral restyling will naturally lead listeners to pay extra attention to the symphonic elements. However, Lambert and his co-parts Daniel Smith (Pressure) and Barry Francis (DJ Debris) were scrupulous about the orchestration not detracting from the songs’ original essence. “Our plan was, ‘It can’t be an orchestral album. It’s got to be a hip hop album,’” Lambert says. “So when we were mixing, we went back to the beginning and remade the beats with the orchestral and choir parts before we brought in the vocals.”

Much like The Hard Road: Restrung, the new project was formulated alongside prolific symphonic composer Jamie Messenger. The Melbourne-based Messenger regularly composes for symphony orchestras all around the country, and has previously ventured into rock and pop to work with the likes of Sia and The Whitlams. However, despite his vast experience, giving these songs an orchestral makeover was no easy task – especially because the group needed to be satisfied enough to justify re-releasing the material.

“It was a real collaboration between us and Jamie,” says Lambert. “Obviously I’m not classically trained so I’m not able to say, ‘The tremolo in this section needs to be blah blah blah.’ So all we can do in the build-up is constantly give him feedback in the direction we want the songs to go. Initially, when we gave him all the songs, we gave him notes on what direction we’d like them to go in. For example, for ‘Speaking In Tongues’ we wanted him to make it a bit moodier and a bit more melancholy because otherwise it was going to stick out on the album and not fit in against the other tracks. Then he wrote his initial arrangements, and then for about six months we went back and forth with him on each track until we were both happy.”

The three members of Hilltop Hoods are all accomplished creative individuals, who’ve released four straight number one albums and done countless sold-out shows and major festivals around the world. However, throwing ideas around with a classical composer was a somewhat humbling process.

“I’ve got a huge admiration for what [Messenger]’s able to do, because it’s not just writing some strings or writing some horns or writing whatever – it’s writing all of it and having it work with each other and work with the existing music,” Lambert says. “I think that’s an incredible gift. But at the same time, music is a language that we all speak. Maybe we don’t phrase everything the same way. But generally we can go, ‘The feeling or the mood of this track is too upbeat…’.”

Drinking From The Sun, Walking Under Stars Restrung contains 19 songs, covering the majority of the two pre-existing records plus parts six and seven in the ongoing narrative serial ‘The Thirst’ and the new singles ‘Higher’ (featuring James Chatburn) and ‘1955’ (featuring Montaigne and Tom Thum).

“[Those songs] weren’t around when we were recording the other albums. It was less something to tie the two albums together and more something to give value added to the fans. You know, if we’re going to go over the top, let’s go completely over the top and throw a bunch of new songs on there. We’re always writing and recording as well, so we always want something new on there, because I constantly find myself distancing myself from the last project. It’s like, ‘Yeah, I like that, but this new stuff we’re doing is way better.’

“[Chatburn] actually entered the Hilltop Hoods Initiative,” adds Lambert, referencing the Hoods’ collaboration with APRA AMCOS to encourage emerging local talent with a $10,000 cash prize. “Even though he didn’t take it away, we thought he had an amazing voice and he’s a great songwriter. And my wife put me onto Montaigne, because she listens to a lot of radio. She really did end up being the perfect fit, because she’s such a gifted singer and [brings] really good energy as a person.”

Aside from the symphonic collaborations, Hilltop Hoods have stayed pretty close to their boom-bap origins. While they’ve gradually expanded their palette – after The Hard Road: Restrung they started working with session musicians in the studio, and they’ve grown cumulatively stronger as lyricists and MCs – they haven’t deviated into EDM or trap or fiddled with stripped-down acoustic arrangements.

“We do what we know and we reflect the music we’ve listened to. I think that’s when musicians get really out of their depth – when they try to keep up with what’s going on around them rather than what they know. As a result, our music’s a reflection of what we’re into. Sometimes we stray out of our comfort zone, but at the core there’s a very Hilltop Hoods sound. And we know it when we hear it – when someone sends us a beat, we know it. After all this time, it’s just sort of innate.”