Sam Fang
HiFi Sean and David McAlmont have released their sophomore album, Daylight, today to celebrate the first day of Summer. The album follows their acclaimed 2023 debut, Happy Ending, and comes with twelve songs that explore the blissful summer feeling.
Daylight will be the first of two albums from the duo releasing in 2024, with a follow up “nocturnal sister album”, Twilight, releasing on the first day of Winter. Daylight boasts a beautiful mix of club sounds, new wave, synth pop and soul to perfectly encapsulate the summer heat. Ahead of the album’s release, POParazzi talked with HiFi Sean and David McAlmont about the new album, their impressive collaborations that includes Yoko Ono and Crystal Waters, as well as what it’s like creating music as queer artists.
POParazzi: Congratulations on the release of your new album Daylight! What was it like recording these new songs?
HiFi Sean: It was such a rush putting together the music and production as at one point it felt like the ship started to steer itself and a sound and vision started to become apparent of how the album should exist. It was so exciting as that has never happened before and I just let the musical journey take its own course.
David McAlmont: Recording is always fun. It’s either facing a 180 degree panorama of the city
where we live and breathe the material or a cottage on the coast. It’s only ever the creatives. It’s so much better than doing it the way we used to, under the interfering eye of A&R types.
Daylight is the first of two albums you have planned for 2024, with Twilight arriving
in Winter. How will the two albums be different from each other?
Sean: Daylight is 12 songs based on the feelings and thoughts a summers day may conjures up. An album of mid-summer rushes. Twilight is its more nocturnal sister conjuring up late cosy winter nights listening to music in the dusk.
Both the albums create a cyclic pattern of 24 hours. Think of Daylight as yellows, oranges and reds.
Think of Twilight as purples, blues, violets.
Being colorblind, these are two groups of shades I have issues with, so to have the music bathed in them seems a real form of escapism for me.
David: Daylight is an album of short sharp pop dance shocks. Happy Ending was the dystopian future. Daylight is “We got over it!”
You’ve said that Daylight represented a significant moment in your partnership and
was produced with a remarkable burst of collaborative energy. What was that
experience like, and how did it shape the songs on the album?
Sean: As I said before, the feeling of letting that collaborative energy take its own course was as exciting for us as much as the listener listening to it for the first time. Certain tracks seemed to create their own self identity. It was like ‘WTF is going on here?’, but hey — don’t diss this or question it as its such an explosion of creativity and I am in for the ride.
David: I wait for Sean. I never know what’s coming down the pipe. I write a lot of ditties to eradicate cliches. The cliches always come first. But then I’ll write and rewrite until it sounds like us.
Daylight‘s songs beautifully capture the feeling of summer, especially ‘Sun Come Up’. What was it like shooting the music video for this track?
Sean: We work with a great film maker called ‘Arber’ who I have known for years. Very underground as in he really does not flirt with social media and lets his art talk for itself. We had lots of sleeve wearing influences with ‘Sun Come Up’. Like the Ken Russell classic ‘Altered States’ and Robin Hardy’s ‘The Wicker Man’. That homage to weird pagan hammer house of horror sun-worshipping.
David: A lot of fun. A lot of our shooting is guerrilla, so we arrive at locations with selfie stick, tripod and iPhone and start shooting before somebody moves us on. And then we work with Arber who has as many cine-gizmos as Sean has plugins.
You are both out and proud queer musicians who have had impressive collaborations with iconic artists like Yoko Ono and Crystal Waters. Do you have any advice for other LGBTQ+ artists who are pursuing music?
Sean: Be yourself as it is pointless being someone else.
David: It all rather depends on whether they are young enough to know everything.
Daylight is available now.
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