HIFI SEAN aka Sean Dickson has been pushing the boundaries of music since first joining bands in his teens, and as a composer, musician, DJ and producer has continued to do so across musical genres for his whole life.

For Sean DJing is not merely a case of playing records, it is a uniquely creative and individual act. His sets are built on many of his own exclusive remixes and re-edits, tailored to take each audience on a unique, personal journey.

Ahead of his DJ set at MOTHER on February 23, HIFI SEAN recalls the anthems that influenced him and played a major role on his journey as a musician.

As someone who has such a deep relationship with music, we asked Sean to take us on a journey from childhood to now and curate the soundtrack of his life.

“From as early as I can remember I was fascinated by records, even more so of the fact that these plastic things made a sound more than the music that actually came off them.

“Supposedly when I was 3 or 4 I ruined all my parents 7”s including a very rare 78rpm 10” of Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” by playing them with sticks which I would put in the hole then spin them around and use sharp stones to see if I could make them make sound like on my Dads record player.”

I knew nothing of what it all meant but I loved the little world that I entered.

A Lifetime of Loneliness – Jackie DeShannon

The first record player I can remember having was a little Dansette made by Alba which my Dad bought for me.  He took me to a record shop and I pointed to one that had a fancy fake leather style embossed sleeve.

The first album he bought for me was Jackie De Shanon’s ‘What the world needs now is love’. It was an old ’60s record that was gathering dust in my local record shop in Bellshill which also doubled as a barber shop.

I used to listen to that album on a loop, all the drama of the strings, the heartbreak country voice of Jackie’s singing about breakups. I knew nothing of what it all meant but I loved the little world that I entered.

Burt Bacharach, who produced the album and the string arrangements really influenced me for later life. I have used orchestration a lot over the years on my records even right up to the current single ‘Lost without U’.

I still have the very copy of this album and for some reason, I scrawled my name on the label. I did that a lot as a kid due to my big brothers always nicking each other’s records.

I was fascinated by the song ‘A Lifetime of Loneliness’ which appears on this album, it sounded so different to anything I knew or heard on TV or radio.

Now I know why; it was dark, it was heartbreak, it was majestic, it had soaring strings and screaming choirs and a vocal that just melts over the track but also a slight sinister twisted feel, something which is always a winner for me.

They were our Sex Pistols, our kind of “up the establishment” and how bleeding boring the lot of you are.

Upside Down – The Jesus & Mary Chain

Growing up I was lucky to have 2 best musical friends in my town, Duglas Stewart (BMX Bandits) and Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub). We would sit in each other’s bedrooms playing records dreaming up musical endeavours and getting lost in fantasies of records we loved in our little town.

In my teens there was one record that was a game changer for me, that record was from a band who were based 7 miles up the road from us and that record was ‘Upside Down’ by The Jesus & Mary Chain.

It was everything I loved about music. It had a beautiful melody somewhat like a ’60s girl group, again that sweetness and heartbreak like Jackie De Shannon, but also it had the added bonus of a jumbo jet attacking your head with a wall of guitar feedback that I had never heard on a record. 
I bloody loved the rush that 7” gave me and I went on to support the Mary Chain a few times with my band so my teenage fandom ended up becoming a reality.

They were our Sex Pistols, our kind of “up the establishment” and how bleeding boring the lot of you are. I likely have teenage implanted tinnitus due to this record, but what a great way to go deaf.

We went to someone’s office in Edinburgh with a VHS of a guy fondling Donald Duck and asked him to superimpose us on top of it.

Whole Wide World – The Soup Dragons

I started a band when I was 16 going on 17, I still can’t remember exactly which but anyway I was young. I asked our drummer Ross to join my band even though he was a guitarist in another band but I told him he had a great haircut and should be in my band. Having great hair was important when you started a band.

Our first proper single was ‘Whole Wide World’ which was one minute and 30 seconds long. I read somewhere that the shorter the track, the louder the record so I decided I would write a 90-second song and put it on one side of a 12” which we did and boy did it sound loud. The video cost like £50. We went to someone’s office in Edinburgh with a VHS of a guy fondling Donald Duck and asked him to superimpose us on top of it.

Of course, it meant nothing to anyone but The Soup Dragons were all about pop art and this was one of our greatest and very cheap examples of that. Jazz Summers who co-managed Wham heard this single on the radio and asked us down to London to meet us and I showed him the £50 video. He asked to manage us on the spot and before we knew it ‘The Chart Show’, which was a big music show at the time, showed a clip of the VHS video on the Indie Chart run down.

The original VHS has really rubbish sound quality but captures youth naivety and basically a bunch of friends having a good time for no money.

It really annoys me that I and my bandmates have never been credited for a lot of the ideas and concepts we did first of our own accord and not by the hands of other DJs or other producers.

Mother Universe – The Soup Dragons

The track that divided all our previous indie fans was the point acid house appeared and I was totally hit by the whole punk rock ethics of it all. At that point, our drummer Ross went back to Art School so I decided to buy an Akai sampler and an Atari computer and start looping things which wasn’t an alien concept to me as a lot of our songs on guitars were written based around looped sections.

I wrote a track from this period called ‘Mother Universe’ which was pressed on white label promo and given to DJs on the club scene, something an indie guitar band never usually does.

This was during the Summer of ’89 and the track was picked up by many cool clubs and DJs. Before I knew it, people were using the term ‘indie-dance’ to describe it.

We’re not supposed to do that as a young boy indie guitar band but listening to it now you can hear influences of T-Rex and dub reggae mixed with slo-mo looped hip hop breakbeats which I listened to a lot of back then.

Our album ‘Lovegod’ which came out end of ’89 originally sounded nothing like the bands the press like to lump us in with, an album that had samples of Charles Manson singing, garage rock fuzz guitars over hip hop beats, songs about suicide influenced by the band Suicide, songs about John Waters movies and the ‘beauty freaks’ and songs sampling Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth rapping with Bohannon grooves running underneath.

It really annoys me that I and my bandmates have never been credited for a lot of the ideas and concepts we did first of our own accord and not by the hands of other DJs or other producers. The visuals on the video were from Benoir Mandelbrot who invented the fractal theory who I contacted via the London Science Museum and he gave us the right to use the images on the video and then on the album sleeve.

Six months later and every bloody acid house rave and poster art were using them.

Living in NYC for a few years in the early ’90s on and off I got totally submerged in downtown NY club culture and the sensual and moody music.

Definition of a Track – Precious

This was a big record for me at the time of going to parties and raves, I remember the first time I heard it in Sound Factory in NYC and to this day I play this a lot in my sets.

I think it opened my mind up to less is more and believe me in a studio situation that is hard for me to do. I tended to gravitate towards the more unusual of the club tracks as opposed to the ravey ones. Living in NYC for a few years in the early ’90s on and off I got totally submerged in downtown NY club culture and the sensual and moody music. You would always hear the best tracks on the second dance floor or backroom of clubs in NYC, Chicago and Detroit.

it was also the first daytime rotation music video over whole of the USA featuring trans artists and underground klub kids

Divine Thing – The Soup Dragons

NYC was a fun place to live in your early 20s. One major thing I am proud of from that period with The Soup Dragons was capturing downtown early ’90s NYC before it really got cleaned in the music video for ‘Divine Thing’ which starred Connie Girl. It involved many of the klub kids from that period and parties in the meatpacking district.

That video ended up being nominated for an MTV Video Award being beat by Nirvana’s ‘Teen Spirit’, of course, but it was also the first daytime rotation music video over whole of the USA featuring trans artists and underground klub kids and really capturing the whole feel of the nightlife that we were living at that point of time.

I am re-visiting my love for big majestic and wonderfully psychedelic strings

The High Fidelity – Odyssey of a Psychonaut

The next chapter of my life was my next band The High Fidelity, and what a short but eventful journey that was.

I started a weekly party at Glasgow Art School with a good friend Alan and he had the DJ name Hush so it was determined that I also had to have a ‘DJ name’.

Each member of the band had an email address like ‘Hifi Ross’, ‘Hifi Paul’ and mine was ‘Hifi Sean’. It was suggested that I use this as my DJ name and so I became HIFI SEAN.

The highlight of my time in The High Fidelity was writing a song with John Peel on the Ominichord Album which still to this day was one of my favourite experiences.  We went to Bangalore India and recorded with a Bollywood film arranger and a full orchestra, a dream come true.

There were four floors of people in many rooms all being recorded simultaneously, you can only see one floor in the footage.

I am re-visiting my love for big majestic and wonderfully psychedelic strings and am working with Chandru again on a new project which will be out in 2020 but that is all I can say right now.

Around 2001 I came out as gay. What I did not expect was it would be the worse year of my life.

London – Up Yours

Around 2001 I came out as gay, funny that as a kid I always was in awe of that year and thought oh its the future and would work out what age I would be and dream of what I would do. What I did not expect was it would be the worse year of my life.

I hit rock bottom with depression after splitting from my wife, my newborn daughter and losing all my friends due to coming out. I locked myself away for many years and turned my back on music.

Then I met a wonderful man who I fell madly in love with the day we met. On that day we said we would get married if we were still together for 5 years and that we did. I was now living in London and immersed myself in the DJ clubbing scene and many years went past Djing at after parties and other mad nights.

One project I am immensely proud of is the record I made with my good friend Severino from Horse Meat Disco and Feral is Kinky called ‘London’.

This song is a celebration of all things London and NYC. That record although an electronic jam of a house record has so much punk to it or should that be spunk, I still play this a lot in sets when the mood is right 
Its a proper one off this track.

To be able to have that chance again of turning friendship into art is a pretty special thing.

Testify – Hifi Sean Ft. Crystal Waters

So basically 14 – 15 years rolled on in my world of “I’ll get round to making music myself again” and something just triggered me into making an album as though I would never make another ever again.

I thought I would ask all the people who I loved through my years to make a record.  I always say be wary of those who only listen to one type of music, I mean it’s like wearing a grey t-shirt everyday right?

I assembled a want list and asked them all. Who would have guessed that they would all say yes? In fact, Alan Vega from Suicide told me that he sat up all night listening to Soup Dragons records as he used to like the band. I mean, why did no one ever tell me that fact?!

I made the album, I released a single that myself and Crystal Waters wrote called ‘Testify’ and then released the album. People seemed to love it and there I was back head first, deep into making music again.

What’s next for Sean?

“David McAlmont and I are currently working on an album together of 12 beautiful and, well, to be honest, I do not know how to describe, ‘cinematic psychedelic soul odysseys’.

“All I know we are lost in our own little world right now and I feel like that 17-year-old who started a band with friends again and for later on in life to be able to do that and have that chance again of turning friendship into art is a pretty special thing.”