10

Amazing!!

The world of music is spinning, swirling, alternating between genres, and bizarre combinations of musical styles. We’ve seen and heard the weird and wonderful between 2007 and 2008. There have been truly magical discoveries in the music industry in the space of two years and there have been some awful breakthroughs. NME had made a big hoo-hah about the not so brilliant but amongst their hype-fest there has been a few gem finds. Hadouken! are one of the very select bands that are actually decent.

How to define them: mission impossible. Could they be Indie? New Rave? Grime? Acid House? Punk? Who knows, but really that’s a trivial debate. What is for sure is that they are perhaps one of the most inventive and vibrant acts of the twenty first century and there music redefines the boundaries of categorisation. They are plain and simple neon coated youthful brilliance.

“Music For An Accelerated Culture” is one of those albums that just will define the music of this decade. One will be able to point to it, in the future, as an example of how music changed so dramatically in the ten years preceding the new millennium. This album has captured our contemporary urbanised materialistic culture within its covers.

The album kicks off with “Get Smashed Gate Crash” a spontaneous blast of house beats and intensive electronica. It sets us up for what should prove to be a similarly spectacular and explosive album. “That Boy That Girl”, “Game Over” and “Declaration Of War” follow and there is no lapse in tempos, it’s all very intense, but no rest for the wicked as the truthful aphorism states. What is so likeable about this band is that their lyrics have a natural connection with the listener. Their lyrics are rich in attitudes emblematic of our present day culture, street language, sheer aggression that the youth of today suffer and the problems they face.

The rest of the album continues to impress, with tracks like “Crank It Up” and “Liquid Lives” sticking out as vivid highlights. This has to be one of the most credible and utterly marvellous debut efforts to have surfaced for years. Wonderful Stuff. Hadouken! have not only paved the way for an even larger-scale musical revolution in the future but they are the future. This is one band-wagon certainly worth leaping on.