“You have to follow the crumbs and the crumbs that I follow always seem to lead to fatalistic scenarios and coincidences, particularly connected to my singing. Doing your own music when no one is listening initially can be quite difficult, but all the times I’ve tried to quit, something major has always happened to kick me back on track.”

Sitting in a Charing Cross Pizzeria on a hot London afternoon, Product 01 singer/ songwriter Rochelle Vincente brushes a crumb from her cheek as she explains her fateful journey from performing with A list Australian bands to Product 01, via a brief, though illuminating period in English pop dance act Dubstar.

“I bought a one way ticket from Australia to America and then Europe, ended up in Germany and when I was there was told ‘the best place for you is England’. So I went to London where I met a producer who lived in Brighton, I moved to Brighton, then everything fell apart within three weeks,” she recalls.

“I was still living off money that I’d earned in Australia at that stage, so I was OK then it did get to a point where I needed a crappy job and strangely enough my instincts told me to get a job at Virgin Cinemas, in Brighton,” she laughs.

“So I started working there for two months, made friends with one of the ushers who it turned out knew Steve Hillier from Dubstar and also knew they were looking for a backing vocalist. He passed on my demo and within a week I was on the road with Dubstar and the Lightning Seeds, and I was back on track.”

“The cinema thing is a classic example of fate,” she continues, “I was an usher; I was the popcorn girl, I helped them out with the management and the box office and I was working in the ticket booth, but through that job I joined Dubstar.”

Dubstar aside though, it’s as Product 01 that she’s both happiest and at her most productive, co-producing music with band mate Marc Adams which has already seem them hailed by the likes of Tommie Sunshine, Radio 1 and fellow Brightonian Adam Freeland.

Recent release Heart Ov Glass (and electro-fied cover of Blondie’s 80s classic) remains their best known song to date, though the pair are just finishing their next single release ‘The Hot EP’ while putting the finishing touches to their debut album.

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): How did Product 01 first get started?

Product 01: “I was living in Brighton working with some other people and I’d just been offered the chance to work with some really well known producers in England but I wasn’t very keen because musically I didn’t like what they were doing. Then one day I was at the Old School studios which was a real artists’ point at the time and Marc was playing some of his music to one of my mates and as soon as I heard it I was like ‘What’s that? So I asked Marc if he’d be up for trying to doing some tracks together, he said yes, but then because he’d just moved to London, we only had maybe two sessions in six months but the tracks that came out were hilarious. My voice sounded like I’d just done helium balloons, it was very stupid party stuff, but we really vibed off each other. We then played our tracks to a couple of people and they really loved them and we thought this feels really right. That was in 2002.”

Skrufff: What happened next?

Product 01: “Mark moved back down to Brighton, which he’d been planning to do anyway and we started writing tracks together full time and my mid 2002 we had four proper tracks ready, sent some out to people and one went straight up on the Radio 1 website, almost immediately. We next had ten promos pressed up of ‘Heart of Glass’ as well as some original tracks, and sent them to people like Adam Freeland and Tiga. And within one week we got three remix commissions, including one for Adam Freeland of his track We Want You Soul. It was quite amazing.”

Skrufff: Did you know Adam Freeland before from living in Brighton?

Product 01: “No, I literally just gave him a record, we were connected via Skint Records. They introduced us to some people and gave us the names and addresses, so we just sent them out to these addresses.”

Skrufff: How much did the ten test pressings cost?

Product 01:”We hadn’t paid for them at that point, I can’t even remember how much they cost, though hey were very cheap; the record people were waiting for us to press up more before they charged. What happened was, we did the  ‘We Want Your Soul’ remix which is on the CD single, then another for International Pony then with the money from those remixes we put out the 01 EP. That was picked as electronic record of the month in Jockey Slut and a lot of DJs started playing it, and at that point our promo list went from ten people to fifty and everything really started kicking off. Tommie Sunshine in the States called up and said I really love your stuff, I want to put this out in the States. There was just a real vibe about it very quickly.”

Skrufff: Did you originally plan to be singer when you first left Australia?

Product 01: “I was already a singer in Australia. I started singing when I was about 17, by a complete fluke, I really do feel like it chose me. I never wanted to be a singer or a songwriter, it’s just one of those things that happened. I was singing in a lot of bands in Australia, ones that were really well known with record deals, Australia very much has its own scene.”

Skrufff: What made you walk away from that world?

Product 01: “I was quite young then and I observed how other people conducted their careers, and quickly realized that it’s easy to get really successful in Australia, but you still have to start from scratch if you come over here. Whereas if you are successful here in England, it seems that everything happens everywhere else, simultaneously. Australian labels generally don’t really support artists internationally, because they want to keep the money within the country, so I was like ‘this could take me 50 years’. I also felt more connected to the English music scene, I was always much more influenced by the English music in Australia, so coming here just felt really natural.”

Skrufff: If everything goes as well as it possibly can with Product 01, what do you hope happens?

Product 01: “World domination! Though having said that, this whole underground crossover concept is a bit over my head, I just want people to enjoy the music. We’re making music that we love not the kind of music that the music industry is trying to force artists to make; they seem to be trying to narrow down the music available to a very limited area, squeezing the individuality out of every artist. What I’m doing with Product is about the music of course, but it’s also about having this freedom as a person on earth, to do what you love to do and share that. When I was seventeen I was offered various record deals to do the obvious chick thing but my attitude even then was that I want words to come out of my mouth that feel right to me, not that I’ll be really embarrassed about. That’s just me, other people do that other stuff really well and they are very comfortable with it, and that’s fine, I’m just saying for me, it doesn’t sit right.”

Skrufff: Am I right in thinking you’ve got no interest in DJing?

Product 01: “I love DJ music and I love DJs if they play my music, how can I not? Though I’ve never written specifically for DJs and there’s a difference, so I have been surprised that they played our stuff. But why don’t I DJ? Because I believe in staying focused and I think if you are a professional DJ it’s a completely different mental focus and life focus, as opposed to if you are an artist and songwriter. I just want to try and be good at one thing and not spread myself too thinly. Songwriting and singing -if you really want to focus on it and try to be the best you can, there’s a lot of daily work that goes into that.”

For more info on Product 01 check out their website: http://www.product01.co.uk.