Hadouken!
Music For an Accelearted Culture
Surface Noise/Atlantic
I’ve never been a big fan of dance music. The closest I ever got to being a club kid was the weekly ’80s Night at the Embassy, a long-since closed-down Orlando club that was quite the hot spot in 1996. This weekly ritual attracted a wide array of local goths and punks who left their irony at the door, and danced the night away to “Come On, Eileen” and “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).” Dance music, in my mind, was the same pop music that I grew up loving as a kid riding around on my BMX with my cassette deck.
Generally I find electronic music to be repetitive and listening to it sober to be about as much fun as listening to the bass that seeps into my quiet space through my neighbor’s wall on a Saturday night. However, every once in a while an artist finds a way to bottle the energy of electronic music without losing the song structure of the classic pop song. Ghostland Observatory have done it, so has Peaches, and now, I find, so have a bunch of kids in the UK who call themselves Hadouken! – exclamation point included.
Music For an Accelerated Culture, while far from being flawless, is invigorating enough to inspire a grand laser display, smoke machines, strobe lights, and some mind-altering substances (yours for the choosing). The album begins with the album’s best, “Get Smashed Gate Crash” and “That Boy That Girl.” When the following song, “Game Over,” revolves around a pep rally groove that recalls high school cheer teams, it’s too late to turn away. Hadouken! has me in their grips and I’ve got to hold on for the remainder of the ride. By the time the album ends, I’ve got the slightest hint of a headache – thanks for the video game sounds that are layered behind the drum beats and synthesizer sounds – and I feel a little guilty, like I’m a teenager sneaking home at 4 a.m.
It’s strangely satisfying, though not an album I’ll revisit often.
Hadouken!: http://www.myspace.com/hadoukenuk
