Hadouken!
Location: London
Tags: indie, electronica, pop
Website: http://hadouken.co.uk
Bio: Looking for a band who sum up the genre-vaulting, scene-splicing, boundary-pushing spirit of music in 2008? A band who can skip between grime, emo, drum’n’bass ... (more)
and euphoric rave in the space of a single chorus? A band whose very existence causes division between trad-rock bores and the youthful, enthusiastic, attention-hopping minds of a younger generation? Then you need look no further than Hadouken!, a band who’ve spent the last two years surfing the cutting edge of the music scene, armed with enough sonic ideas to make your common-or-garden indie band run for cover.
The last year of Hadouken!’s hectic ascension to the top flight has seen them blow the packed Radio 1 tents away at Reading and Leeds festivals, rocking sold-out crowds touring across the UK ending in a blistering show at London’s Astoria, and building an insanely devoted online fanbase (88,000 myspace friends and counting),while at the same time inspiring a range of DIY day-glo clothing, demolishing a million and one pigeonholes and growing into one of the most forward-thinking bands in the country.
Following the release of their USB-only ‘Not Here To Please You’ Mixtape in November 2007, and after months of hardcore grafting in the studio, Hadouken! are, readying themselves to release their debut album proper. ‘Music For An Accelerated Culture’, will be released on May 5th 2008. A dazzling 11-track journey through indie, dubstep, grime, hardcore, acid house, and UK punk, consider it a defining statement - the dovetailing, myriad-influenced sound of 2008.
“We’re definitely a product of the environment,” agrees vocalist and Hadouken! main man James Smith. “We digest so much music, from genre to genre, so fast. And our music is moving quickly, as well - we’re not planning on staying still. You have to keep ahead of the game.”
‘Keeping ahead of the game’ is in many ways in fact, exactly what ‘Music For An Accelerated Culture’ is all about. Last year, as critics frantically tried to compartmentalise them as “new rave” or “grindie”, each record Hadouken! put out felt like a swerve towards a new direction. And so it follows that, just as people are starting to get used to the Leeds five-piece as purveyors of jokey indie floor-fillers, along comes an album with a sinister undercurrent.
James: “There’s a tone to the first songs, like Dance Lesson, that’s fun… but we wanted a go at things that weren’t so fun, things that were a bit darker really, which is why there’s only two old songs on the record (Liquid Lives and That Boy That Girl). We wanted to move things on, like Radiohead or The Prodigy would do with each new record. It’s a step forward, but in a way it’s also a step back, because we went right back to the electronic, dancey style of the original demos that got us off our feet. There’s some dancey stuff, some harsher stuff, a mix of singing, MC-ing and shouty punk vocals. But at the same time, we weren’t afraid of the album having a real pop sensibility to it.”
Which is why this is a record within which the epic, emo-tinged sound of ‘Driving Nowhere’ can happily nestle on the same tracklist as album opener ‘Gate Smashed Gate Crash’ (which kickstarts proceedings with the declaration “Let’s get this party started”) and the mind-boggling ‘Wait For You’, which, in James’ own words, contains “a dark tone and fucked up production. It’s got backward vocals and reverb and is quite dubstep-tinged. It’s overpowering.”
It is, however, more than just the music that has changed at Hadouken! HQ: the lyrics have got darker too. Namechecking Douglas Coupland’s seminal novel Generation X (whose subtitle is ‘Tales For An Accelerated Culture’) was a meaningful choice:- “After we’d written the album we were looking for a unifying link between the tracks and it became clear they were all separate stories and that a lot of them had a morality to them,” says James.
And so, underpinning the humourous snapshots of booze Britain in ‘Liquid Lives’ is a very serious and insistent message about a generation of kids clinging on to alcopop bottles. ‘Wait For You’, meanwhile, is a disturbing tale of stalker-proportion obsession. And whereas a track like ‘Get Smashed Gate Crash’ might, on the surface, seem to be about smashing up a house party in true Skins style, the underlying issue is about responsibility. As James explains: “Whose fault is it? The parents who left the child alone? The child that smashed up their place? You hear a lot of stuff about ‘today’s youth’, but the people who complain are the ones who raised them.”
Such progression is the sign of a band who’ve had to grow up in public rather rapidly. After all, it was only two years ago that they formed. James had been going out with keyboardist Alice Spooner since they met doing a foundation course in their native Hertfordshire, but it wasn’t until they both headed off to university in Leeds and met Dan Rice (guitar) that their maverick musical ideas began to blossom. Influenced by the DIY ethos of Leeds’ indie label Dance! To The Radio, Dan and James started putting out limited edition vinyl on their own Surface Noise label, before realising their obsession with music would be best served in their own band. Dan recruited younger brother Nick on drums, whereas bassist Chris Purcell was a friend of Nick’s from Guilford.
Whilst there’s a tradition of indie bands discovering dance music, James did things the opposite way around. As a teenager, he was making grime records with True Tiger Camp in Watford, and identifying obscure dubplates for 1Xtra’s Pirate Sessions. He still describes producing as his “first love” which is why he manned the desks for most of the tracks on Music For An Accelerated Culture, with a little help from his friends Rich Costey (Liquid Lives) and Jacknife Lee (Declaration Of War, Driving Nowhere, Game Over).
Like with all the best bands and movements, it wasn’t long before the band’s eclectic taste fizzled together to produce some rather tasty sonic treats.
Dan: “When we came back to London, it was great going out to clubs and hearing them play indie next to drum’n’bass next to grime next to metal… and suddenly realising there was a crowd of people who wanted to hear that all together.”
James: “I’ve always had such eclectic taste, but I didn’t think there’d be so many people into the same thing. We’d go to squat parties in east London, and seeing it going down well was amazing.”
Realising they weren’t alone in having an insatiable appetite for new noises is what gave the band the confidence to write their genre-fusing songs. It’s defined them as a band that could only ever have existed in 2008 – representing the mix’n’match, guilt-free, try-anything approach to music that will surely stamp its mark on this decade.
James: “What’s great about the music scene now is that, it might not make you the millions of pounds it did back in the day, because nobody buys CDs anymore, but you’re much more free creatively to do what you want. You don’t have to be dance or punk or indie, you can stick all those things into the melting pot and try and make it work.”
Which is why you’ll hear everything from old Dreamscape and Raindance rave tapes to what James describes as a “real punk aesthetic” on Music For An Accelerated Culture. And it’s not just the music that’s breaking boundaries. As with their mixtape, which was the first USB-only release, Hadouken! are pushing the limits of formats once again with a special limited edition box-set edition of the album, containing extras including DVD material and illustrated lyrics. It’ll be numbered and signed by the band, and available exclusively from HYPERLINK "http://www.hadouken.co.uk/"www.hadouken.co.uk. Fans who purchase the limited box set will instantly become part of ‘Aerials’ an exclusive community that has exclusive access to a vat of Hadouken! music, free tickets, special merchandise and discounts, as well as regular contact with the band themselves. Most importantly, members of Aerials will get a high quality download of the album TWO WEEKS before it hits the high street, or indeed iTunes – April 25th versus the official May 5th release date.
“We wanted to create a way that fans could engage with the band,” enthuses James. “In this day of disposable downloads, we wanted something the fans could value and cherish. The box set got me excited because it’s going to be something you can hold and appreciate. We’ve always done that – signed copies, hand painted copies, USB mixtapes… this was just the next step.”
As with anything breaking boundaries, their music has earned them some critics, who get their knickers in a twist groaning about their bright colours and confusing music. A bit like your granddad might do. But Hadouken!’s music doesn’t belong to grumbling musos. It belongs to the legions of young, neon-splattered fans in homemade H! t-shirts, who own every online release, who start crowd-surfing before the band are even onstage.
“You’re doing something wrong if you’re pleasing everyone,” rallies James. “The next generation should piss off the older people. We want to make a dent in the musical history of the UK, so obviously we’re gonna have to upset a few people along the way.”
And why try and please everyone when you’ve only got the one shot at making that seminal debut album?
“This album had to be of the moment for us,” concludes James. “It had to capture everything we’re about right now: energy, vibrancy and wanting to separate ourselves from the pack by creating an uncompromising pop record.”
Uncompromising pop record? Separate from the pack? Energetic and vibrant? Consider Hadouken!’s debut album mission accomplished.
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