HARD-FI'S gig at Fibbers next Friday, re-arranged from April, has sold out.

The four blokes in combats from Staines play York in the lead-up to the July 4 release of their debut full-length album, Stars Of CCTV, on Necessary Records/Atlantic Records.

Last October they pressed 500 copies of a DIY mini-version of the album, recorded on the cheap - £300 rent and the price of a second-hand computer - at their beloved Cherry Lips studio, a former 24-hour cab office on a bleak Staines industrial estate.

Legendary American producer Rick Rubin was quickly on the phone to Necessary Records, pronouncing it a landmark record, and Hard-Fi rushed to the top of every major label's Must Sign list. They chose Atlantic and began recording the full version of Stars Of CTV, insisting on using the familiar surroundings of Cherry Lips.

After numerous dusk-till-dawn recording sessions, frontman Richard Archer and long-time cohort Wolsey White would jump into a car and spin around the B-roads and by-passes of Staines, Egham and ASBO capital Feltham, road-testing their night's work against its sullen suburban backdrop.

Their clattering, small-town tales of itchy dissatisfaction and weekend hedonism, such as first single Cash Machine, Living For The Weekend and Tied Up Too Tight, meet these words of praise from Fibbers boss Tim Hornsby: "Hard-Fi are an epiphany: The Specials from Saturn, the revolutionary wing of Junior Senior, the late-Seventies having a knife fight with itself. With an air of Ghost Town desolation and a sinister Bee Gees boogie, this is Blur joyriding in a stolen Ford Fiesta. Gorillaz called this 'zombie hip-hop', but in Hard-Fi's crooked fists it's lightning on the dance floor."

Updated: 15:40 Thursday, June 02, 2005