In The Dark: Red Light Company

An unflinching beast that answers to no man. The music industry hype machine is often just that, promising more hot new bands, ones to watch and top tips than it can possibly deliver - but on the odd occasion it keeps its promise; Red Light Company are one such occasion.

Two years ago, Richard Frenneaux was just another frustrated musician in search of like minded souls to help realise his musical aspirations. Rather than count on a fabled chance encounter, he turned to the internet, posted an advert on a UK website, sat back and waited. Not called the World Wide Web for nothing, Richard didn’t have to wait long for Shawn Day (bass) to answer the ad… all the way from America’s least populated state, Wyoming, 4500 miles away:

“I was feeling musically dead at that time and hearing something fresh out of the city blew me away” says Shawn from the seclusion of London’s Sony BMG offices.

“It’s funny when you’re on different sides of the globe” muses Richard “With the internet and music being so readily available, people can have very similar influences, so you don’t need to go to school together to make a band.”

After just a few emails, preparations were hastily made; Shawn sold up, jumped on a plane and headed to Blighty for their first gig just three days later. But there was a hitch and with insufficient funds to finance his stay, he was detained by immigration. It was touch and go, but eventually deemed to pose no threat to the UK economy Shawn was released and met the band in a pub, his first time in an English boozer.

With Chris Edmonds (keyboards), Paul Mellon (guitar) and James Griffiths (drums) completing the line-up, an independently collective dream was fast becoming a living reality and attention turned to establishing a band proper as Richard explains:

“We were just two outsiders in London at the time and we wanted to be in the gang, so we built a gang of our own. Four people is kind of a gang… five’s like…”

“Dysfunctional?” offers Shawn

“There’s always some heated discussion” concedes Richard

“Always a culture clash” adds Shawn alluding to the fact that he was born in Osaka, Japan, Richard spent his formative years in Australia and New Zealand, James is from Wales, Paul Scotland and Chris the sprawling metropolis of Maidenhead.

“If you fall out with one, at least you’ve still got three others to talk to” says Chris suffering in self-imposed man-flu silence.

Trans-Atlantic gang primed and almost ready, all that the band needed to do now was arm themselves with a sufficient arsenal of impressively head-turning songs, a task that Richard had been busy occupying himself with for some time:

“It was just myself and Shawn writing” says Richard “I produced the demos in my flat in Baker Street, so we had an idea of the sound we wanted. Adrian (Bushby: U2, Placebo, Foo Fighters) who co-produced just took what we had and made it better in so many ways. But I think the songs speak for themselves in whatever form they’re in, you can strip them back to acoustic and they still sound great.”