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 (Warner)
The game just isn't fun anymore...
Maybe my reaction to the debut album from UK new ravers Hadouken! is a sign of my advancing age – as an borderline-alcoholic nineteen-year-old arts student, fond of dancing to loud music and vomiting in alleys every Friday and Saturday night, I probably would have found this shit awesome, but as a twenty-something near shut-in, more selective in terms of my musical choices and infinitely more cynical, I really can’t get into it. Music For An Accelerated Culture (WEA) gives it all away right from the start – opening salvo of tracks Get Smashed Gate Crash, That Boy That Girl and Game Over feature jagged, noisy electro beats that gallop over and crash into one another, synths gurgle and percolate and vocalist James Smith spits raps over the top. I don’t know, maybe you need to be from England and have a fully-rounded appreciation of yoof culture circa 2008 to really get this stuff, but Hadouken!’s genre-defying mash-up of grime, indie, electro, hip hop dub, punk and synth pop manages to incorporate the most tedious elements of all those genres and completely misses what made them good in the first place. In small doses, Accelarated Culture could be alright, but for eleven pounding, noisy, neon-coloured tracks, even with a relatively short running time of thirty six minutes, it’s difficult going ... fans of Dizzee Rascal and arts students who enjoy comparing haircuts and vomiting in bushes might get into Hadouken!, but I’m steering clear.
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ALASDAIR DUNCAN
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