Hadouken! Releases The Ultimate Dance Album
'Music For An Accelerated Culture' Will Get the Crowd Moving
Hadouken is no longer just a fighting technique in Street Fighter(tm). Hadouken! is a Leeds, Uk based electro/new rave band.
'Music For An Accelerated Culture' was released in May of 2008 in Europe, Japan and Australia and in October 2008 in America. Since then, the band has played sold-out shows and music festivals across Europe.
After contacting the band and speaking with Guitarist Pilau Rice and Bassist Chris Purcell, the two shared their influences, what a Hadouken! gig is like, and discussed the progress of their second album.
Hadouken! Infuences
Q. Who are some of your influences/favorite bands?
A. Pilau: Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Dizzee Rascal, Rage Against The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, The Streets.
Chris: I think one of my favorite bands of late has to be the Arctic Monkeys. I remember sitting in a studio in Brixton with Nick and watching their Glastonbury set and when we went to Japan we saw them play to a baseball stadium full of people. I've been following them throughout that whole process and then ending up in a band myself, it kind of makes you think that anything is possible.
Song Writing
Q. How involved is each member when it comes to song writing?
A. Pilau: Almost all the songwriting comes from James. He starts by demoing the tracks on his laptop and we each tweak the parts for our instruments, work on the structure arrangement and record a final version.
Q. What is the best song to perform live?
A. Chris: When we toured for Music For An Accelerated Culture we opened up with the album opener; 'Get Smashed Gate Crash'. Given that the track has the best part of 40 seconds before the drop it always served to create this big air of tension in the crowd and with us-everyone knew when it was going to happen, they were just waiting for it to come. When James, Dan and I would shout 'Let's get this party started' it was always insane to see venues explode with so much energy.
Q. What is the craziest gig you guys have played?
A. Chris:We played Nottingham, a city we hadn't been to. I think we had to pull up to the show twice to stop the security guys from getting crushed by the barriers from the crowd surges. People were fainting, there was beer flying everywhere and the stage was moving so much because of the crowd jumping that Nick had a hard time stopping his kit from moving. We haven't really done any shows like Sheffield since.
Hadouken! on Tour & Album Plans
Q. Do you plan on touring America any time soon?
A. Chris: This is probably the toughest question to answer since there are so many factors to consider. We released our record ourselves in America through Surface Noise. We're basically relying on American fans buying it in order to be able to support the release with some shows. The big problem is nobody really buys music anymore because of the availability of music through torrents or p2p. Illegal Downloads=no royalty to artist to recoup advance from record label=huge debt owed to label=dropped from label.
Q. You've already started working on the second album, how is that going?
A. Chris: It definitely still sounds like Hadouken! but the album is shaping up to be a more coherent collection of material than MFAAC. We learn a lot from touring and seeing what tracks went down well live and what didn't and trying to work out why. It's hard to say too much, we're trying to keep it heavily under wraps, but the new material has really renewed our excitement for the band.
'Music For An Accelerated Culture' is an engaging combination of massive kick patterns, claps, Gameboy (tm) samples, synthesizer, square bass, refreshing lyrics and aggressive MC vocals from lead singer James Smith.
Discover and download Hadouken!. Check out : " Get Smashed, Gate Crash", "Crank It Up", "Driving Nowhere".
Music For An Accelerated Culture is out now!
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