Red Light Company

Why would you start a band to be ordinary? Growing up in a ever shifting set of family homes as his father pursued his career around the globe, Richard Frenneaux, the mainstay and lead singer of Red Light Company found his solace in a bundle of alternative music and a fascination with the culture that pervaded his favourite bands. Whether it was the alien qualities of David Bowie, the glacial cool of Echo And The Bunnymen or the street fighter politics meets high art ideals of The Clash, the young Richard, whether in his native UK, the heat of Australia or the now lush greenery of New Zealand, was obsessed with the idea that pop music could meld high art and widespread appeal to make something truly subversive.
Growing up around the world widened Richard’s mind, he readily admits that ‘It was amazing to see so many places growing up’ but left a sense of dislocation that will be familiar to anyone that has moved schools frequently. This meant that translating his vision of a band that would emulate and surpass his teenage heroes was very much a solo exercise for Richard, there was no enlisting friends from down the road. By the time he was ready to launch the group, and it was always a group that had been in his head on those global jaunts, it is little surprise that members were recruited via the internet.
The band that those members applied to join was a fully formed group, complete with songs that had been constructed by the music technology graduate at home on his computer. As to how those members would come about, the question never really occurred to the singer and songwriter. Richard may sound arrogant when he states, ‘the most important thing for me was this idea that people would come to London from wherever and have the commitment to be in a band... and all on the strength of my material’ but the tone is that of a man convinced of the rightness of the situation as opposed to his genius.
The concept of Red Light Company went beyond the music. With a stated aim to replicate that subversive approach to the mainstream, the lyrics hid a reflective, shadowy riposte within their seemingly uplifting and anthemic melodies, an approach that was very much in Richard’s mind from the off, ‘There’s this juxtaposition between lyrics and music that I have always liked. You can get away with having a pop song with really dark undertones’. In the best sense, the newly formed Red Light Company were the vehicle for Frenneaux’s desire to burn brightly whilst challenging the listener, with musical influences buttressed by a love of the films of David Lynch and a self confessed ‘mild obsession’ with Christian F’s 1981 arthouse classic ‘Wir Von Bahnhof Zoo’.
“I watched that before I put Red Light Company together. It’s about a group of teenagers in Berlin who are all heroin addicts, really young children wreaking havoc. There was something really dark, but also intriguing about it. It had Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ as its soundtrack and it was just very exciting. Obviously, it couldn’t have been glamorous, but I guess it’s the idea of looking at the darker side of life as voyeurs, which is what I want people to connect with by us having big melodies.”
These ideas came together to form the debut Red Light Company album, ‘Fine Fascination’. Early reactions to the album and its clutch of radio approved singles, ‘With Lights Out’, ‘Meccano’ and ‘Scheme Eugene’ vindicated Richard’s planning and his beliefs in his music as a great vehicle for smuggling dark matter into the heart of daytime with support across the board from the likes of Radio One and The Sunday Times Culture who hit the nail on the head when they suggested that Red Light Company ‘offer a compelling reminder of just how visceral so-called big music can be’.
The success of that debut album with a Top 20 placing on week of release has added to Frenneaux’s already unquestionable belief that Red Light Company exist for a defined reason. The concept of making high art accessible to all, of challenging the listener and offering a world of excitement and possibilities continues to drive the songwriter as he looks beyond ‘Fine Fascination’ to continue his chosen mission of kicking against the ordinariness of too many currents artists.
‘There’s a real lack of that untouchable quality, where the band feels a little bit elevated and they create a world of their own. I love it when a band can create this bubble- we can gget in but we’re not allowed in. It’s the idea of the enigma’.
As it was since he was a teenager, the fire that propels Frenneaux and, by definition, Red Light Company burn as brightly as at any point since the idea of this band became a reality in his teenage head. ‘Fine Fascination’ is only the prologue to a story that is constantly being written in Richard’s head, and to which he adds daily
‘It drives me nuts not to be writing and moving on. It’s like being starved of oxygen. I need that to exist – I’ve got to be constantly moving with my life’.