Ex-Soup Dragon star Hifi Sean talks about new album with David McAlmont and his singing nerves
03.02.2023 - 16:15
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
He has a new album called Happy Ending but Soup Dragons’ Sean Dickson’s new music is a glorious beginning.
The Bellshill musician and producer/DJ who now goes by the moniker Hifi Sean has teamed up with David McAlmont, who had huge hit Yes with Suede’s Bernard Butler, for their first album together which is released today.
How did you meet?
When I did the Ft. album in 2016 with guest artists like Yoko Ono and Crystal Waters.
Before that I hadn’t made an album for 15 years. I was lost in the weekend life of DJing. I’d lost all confidence as a singer so decided to get other people and asked David.
I gave everyone three songs to choose. We booked a studio in Brixton and met for the first time over a coffee in the cinema next door.
We got on like a house on fire. We recorded Like Josephine Baker and he came to my DJ gigs and I went to his jazz club gigs and became best mates.
Once we were having a drunken heated conversation about Prince and I said you couldn’t write songs like him unless you were a producer.
David was like “prove it” and I put down some drums and chords and he sang over it.
It turned into Hurricanes which is on the album. The next week we wrote something else and I said we should make an album. He kept me waiting overnight, saying, “I’ll think about it.” Later, he told me he wanted to do it but was trying to act cool.
While it’s taken us a while to release the album we haven’t been working on it all the time, maybe eight months in total.
Is it music then lyrics and is it a 50/50 split?
David does 99.9 per cent of the lyrics. I’ll send David music ideas and he’ll walk down the road singing on his phone and send me something back on WhatsApp.
One time we did things differently. I’m obsessed with song titles. I