Hip hop gets a classical makeover with Hilltop Hoods linking with orchestras for Restrung tour

HILLTOP Hoods will stage their most ambitious tour yet when they perform with orchestras. Now they just have to figure out what to do with the pyros.

10/12/15 ***PICS MUST BE EMBARGOED FOR DECEMBER 19*** Suffa - Matt Lambert, DJ Debris - Barry Francis and MC Pressure - Dan Smith from the Hilltop Hoods take a break from rehearsing at Fowlers Live in Adelaide. photo Calum Robertson

THE Hilltop Hoods are already trying to figure out how to subvert centuries of orchestral tradition.

Could Australia’s premier players read off iPads instead of sheet music?

It’s not going to happen on their ambitious Restrung tour with the country’s symphony orchestras in April.

“I don’t think we are allowed to have a lot of pyro around them either as some of those instruments are worth a million dollars,” Pressure says.

But like everything Suffa (Matt Lambert), Pressure (Daniel Smith) and Debris (Barry Francis) have done over the past two decades, they can dare to dream.

Suffa and Pressure laugh heartily when asked if their 15-year-old selves would have considered it perverse for a hip hop trio to record and perform with orchestras.

“Absolutely. But when you think back, the most perverse thing is probably going back to tell 15-year-old us listening to Black Thought (The Roots) and Pharoahe (Monch) that we would work with them one day,” Suffa says.

“You know that Simpsons episode when Homer lies on the ground and spins in circles? That. It’s that feeling.”

Before the tour, the Hoods will release an album which reimagines the singles and title tracks of their two previous No. 1 records, Drinking From the Sun and Walking Under Stars with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and a choir.

They have form for such ambition, having re-recorded The Hard Road album as a Restrung project in 2007.

But the tour, which will feature concerts in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth with their respective state symphonies, is a world first for hip hop.

It will be a show not only for the hundreds of thousands of fans the band have amassed since they became the first Australian hip hop act to have a platinum-selling album. Their 2003 record The Calling smashed into the mainstream courtesy of the inescapable anthem The Nosebleed Section.

“If an Australian hip hop group can do a remix, can work with an orchestra, and that can bring out people from the periphery who aren’t necessarily into us or orchestral work, then I think that’s good for the culture and not just for us,” Suffa says.

Pressure adds: “All of these elements already exist within our music. On the last four records, we’ve worked with a quartet, with horns, live session piano. Most of those instruments are on there. We don’t mess with the bassoon ordinarily, but we do now.”

The Hoods once again enlisted composer Jamie Messenger to handle the arrangements with New Zealand conductor Hamish McKeich guiding the performance of the musicians and choir.

In a behind-the-scenes trailer for the Restrung project, you can see both the awe and anxiety in their faces during the sessions. The awe springs from their admiration for the talents of the players. The anxiety is provoked by relinquishing a modicum of control over the process.

Suffa, in particular, has a Rain Man-worthy attention to detail.

When the band and their producer One Above were back and forthing on the mix of one track, Suffa provoked laughter when he pointed out one surprising detail.

Pressure said the producer had made the ninth handclap out of every 16 in a four-bar loop slightly out of time to give it more of a natural sound. One Above didn’t think anyone would notice. Suffa did.

“I’m not Rain Man,” Suffa protests. “I have feelings, not just panic feelings. And hey, Qantas are still on that sweet roll.”

As they push forward with the Restrung album, their attention has also been drawn back to that defining moment of their career when The Nosebleed Section propelled them from the underground to one of the most respected and successful groups in Australia.

The song was inducted this year into the Sounds Of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive registry which recognises recordings of cultural and historical significance.

That one impressed the parents.

“Our thing, when we look back and reflect on that song and what it did for us 12 years ago, is we didn’t know this could be a job,” Suffa says.

“We didn’t have anyone before us being a hip hop artist in Australia that showed it could be a job.”

And then they reveal their music has found a far murkier home. Some savvy tourist operators in South Australia have been using Hilltop Hoods tunes to attract sharks for divers.

“Yeah, they can’t chum the water anymore because it was giving the sharks a taste for it so they play us because sound travels far in the water,” Suffa says.

So they play the Hoods to piss off sharks?

“Yes they do,” he says with a hint of pride.

Preceding the album release in February is new song Higher, featuring James Chatburn, a soulful Sydney singer they discovered via their annual Hilltop Hoods Initiative, a $10,000 grant for an up and coming hip hop or soul artist to help them record an album.

One Above was another find from the program. The combined talents of the Hoods and their proteges propelled the song to a top 10 debut last week.

“The song came first before asking James to get on it,” Pressure says.

“I did sing the hook, just not very well. I only recorded it as a placeholder, it was always intended to be sung by a great vocalist. I went through some names and James came up and he’s got a killer voice.”

Drinking From the Sun, Walking Under Stars Restrung is released on February 19. The Restrung tour is at Allphones Arena on April 2, Brisbane Entertainment Centre on April 8, Adelaide Entertainment Centre, April 16, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, April 23 and Perth Arena, April 30.

Originally published as Hip hop gets a classical makeover with Hilltop Hoods linking with orchestras for Restrung tour