It is widely accepted these days that if you’ve never heard of Hadouken!, then you really need to get a life! Exploding onto the music scene in late 2006 the bands unique sound completely revolutionised the indie/grime scene.
The original, four, but now five piece set-up from Leeds and London are most famous for their debut 7” ‘That Boy That Girl’ that was released early last year and limited to just 500 copies on the band’s own label Surface Noise. The track was coined an Internet Phenomenon, with the band gaining a huge nationwide fan-base as a result of ‘The MySpace Generation’. It was soon followed up by Top 40 hit ‘Liquid Lives’.
They toured the UK over the summer and autumn of 2007 and released their first EP ‘Not Here To Please You’ in November of last year, which was the first extended play or album in history to be released as a USB.
After the digital-only release of track ‘Leap of Faith’ at the same time as the EP, the band struggled to continue with their identity. With album opener ‘Get Smashed Gate Crash’ they have gone back to producing tracks like ‘That Boy That Girl’, where the band feel the rawness in their sound was what made them exciting in the first place.
Their debut studio album ‘Music For An Accelerated Culture, to be released in a few weeks (May 5th).
Review
Track #1: Get Smashed Gate Crash
Building up a tense and explosive opening James Smith explodes into an exchanted chasm of heart rendering electronic nuclear bombs. "Lets get this party started" exclaims the limey indie grimster. At this point, my palms begin to get sweaty and my pulse races to this contageous infection of electronica.
Get Smashed Gate Crash was released as a 10" vinyl last month and saw Hadouken! fly back to their roots after an experimental EP in 'Leap of Faith' last november.
Track #2: That Boy That Girl
Epic and classic Hadouken! the post Klaxon 2007 hit maybe a little old in new music terms, but to leave this track out of their debut album would be a crime against humanity to say the least.
The hoxton-heros and indie-cindy's of the UK might be filtering out into new spectrums of weirdness this year, but this is still one quality tune.
Track #3: Gameover
The first new track from the band that I've heard as a result of this album, and its clearly not as good as Liquid Lives, but think Bounce with the swagger of Superstar.
The beat is old skool big-beat and the vocals catchy, it rounds off a deafening opening... I might need to turn it down a tad as my flatmates are starting to moan though!
Track #4: Declaration of War
The new single sees the first release of a slow H! song, well slow to some respect. The verses are faster than the chorus which is odd, but works well. On some parts of the song, the keyboard riffs have been nicked from Bounce and cut on the speed a bit, but they really add depth to the sound. The bass is shattering on this track, I think it's James & Co's first attempt at a real pop song, and the media have really picked up on the poppyness, which is a shame, because I think its a great song.
Track #5: Mr Misfortune
Possibly the closest song on the album to 'That Boy That Girl' B Side 'Tuning In'. "Don't Be Down in the Dumps" James opens to the darkness of H!, fusing a bit of grime and garage with break-beat goodness. The lyrics are class and it placing on the album splits up the old skool H! with the new songs they've recorded over the past few months.
Track #6: Crank It Up
Just when you think they might be letting up on the tunage, they drop a H!-Bomb!
Crank It Up is this albums answer to the current state of the music industry. Its cheesy lyrics are really remeniscent of yet again, Bounce, but with an insane beat that pumps up the album bigger than a pornstars 'special' lips!
Track #7: What She Did
H!'s attempt at some Dub-Step and some Acid-House beats. This album really is getting better and better with every listen. I can't understand how NME have slated the album and given it a 6/10, its far greater than that!
What She Did is brain churning electronica, and you can really see the influences of Kernkraft, Prodigy and Crystal Method coming through into certain parts of this track. There is no mercy for anyone listening to this album, it's not possible for anyone to arise from the ashes of Music For An Accelerated Culture the same person prior to it.
Track #8: Driving Nowhere
Possibly an opening gig track, Driving Nowhere is the experimental song of the collection. The sort of song you write, frustrated and stressed with song writing, as evident with the Biffy Clyro esc beats on 2:37 onwards. I think this track suggests the spectrum of sound that the band can cover, this track is short and to the point. H! want to let people know the time spent since their first single release early last year wasnt spent didding about clubbing and getting pissed, they are on a mission that they want to finish, and finish well.
Track #9: Liquid Lives
Drink! Smoke! Fuck! Fight! Ok, maybe some of the time was spent getting rather a bit too pissed, but it's what the band are all about, not standing around at gigs 'apreciating music' as the old-folk like to call it, but getting off your tits and making some darn loud noise!
Always will be my favourite track from H! the message is timeless and it will stand the test of the time as one of the lyrics of this decade, if there is anythng to remember this weird decade by?
Track #10: Spend Your Life
A social mockery song, finally something to do with a wee bit of politics. I'd thought James wasn't capable of writing such a song until I interviewed him with my podcast (http://www.earstotheskies.com) just a couple of weeks ago. That's when I found out for myself that he isn't just a rock star, hes actually a pretty intelligent so n so, who knows exactly what is going on in the world, and don't flamin' like it.
Track #11: What For You
This song almost acts like the morning after pill, or some nurofen after a night on the town. It seems to clense all the nastiness and filth from a night out at a H! gig. The album closes on a downer, but you can't really notice it after the previous 10 track rape of your entire body
Verdict
If there are any problems that I've got with the album, then I would tell you; but I don't. It's not perfect in a sense that, it's going to leave you feeling as if you will never hear a better constructed and written album EVER; but to be honest for me, there's nothing wrong with it. It's got all the ingredients of Hadouken! and with the band exploring a more electronica sound rather than sticking to the 'nu-rave' tag they seemed to have developed out of choice of other critics.
There's a lot of indie/electroness out there at the moment, Does It Offend You, Yeah?/Justice/The Whip/Kissy Sell Out/Simian/Late of the Pier, however, for me Hadouken! are the band that started it all. Obviously not started it all, we'll leave that down to the good old Minimoog and Yamaha YX-7, but they seem to have inspired a lot of top new bands that were born around the same time post-Klaxons to explore a more electronica based sound, reminiscent of the 90s LA Scene and everything that goes with Prodigy and Crystal Method. If Hadouken! could produce a second album anything near to the par in a conventional-band sense of 'Music for the Jilted Generated' or 'Vegas', then fuckin' bring it on!
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment