Hadouken!

The eighties was never a great decade really was it? It had just left the flair of the seventies and wasn’t quite close enough to the new millennium to get excited yet. Maggie ruled with an iron fist and strikes were as commonplace as affairs on Dallas. As an eighties kid myself I still try to repress memories of purple shell suits and Phil Collins’ solo career.

	"The onus is on enjoyment, energy, and the eradication of self-image."

But what a wonderful concept the retrospective is. What was then crap is now cool and is emblazoned on the new millennium in a neon retrograde. Space Invaders is some kind of religion now and The Goonies was compulsory viewing in my first year at university. Who would have thought it? The eighties are back, and they are trendy!

Cue Hadouken! as some kind of rave-like nostalgia for that decade; covering themselves in glo-stick fluid and dancing like they are a little bit mental in the head. I can imagine that them as cockney chavs, only they won’t nick your wallet, they’d probably just rave round you shouting “‘ere, get on the dog and bone and see if this aint a Jonty Webb you f*****g Merchant Banker” and you won’t have a clue what they’re on about because you can’t hear anything over the rave-metal pandemonium, and you probably don’t even care because your so smashed off your face that you’ve already ordered a doner kebab and two cheesy chips and urinated in the corner of the room.

Essentially its all a bit crazed. The onus is on enjoyment, energy, and the eradication of self-image. The lead singer does some form of rap, only it’s more varied in tone and it speaks of dancing like a prick rather than cruising with your homies: “I'm an indie limey, yeah but I like it grimey, and I rave with a grin, I'm not too cool for the next big thing.” It’s quite Beastie Boys-esque which is great because it brings together Hip Hop and Hardcore punk and fuses it with the 1980s’ electro rapcore to form...err...well I’m not entirely sure.

It’s all very non-conformist. The brilliant 'That Boy That Girl makes reference to how all ‘indie kids’ look the same, intent on maintaining their “myspace pout” in order to look cool. They seem to interrogate the importance of what it is to be an individual, to enjoy life without restrictions: “I stay hard like metal, you could never merk me, dirty like skettle, I kill germs like dettol, get mucky, but I will never settle.”

They begin the rave with 'Don’t Give up your Day Job Boy', a plunging, undulating song that makes it seem like you have walked into a Jay-Z/Linkin Park collaboration only that Pac-Man’s there and he’s listening to it on a walkman. Very strange. And then 'Liquid Lives' comes on and you nearly break into an all-out break-dancing move because it’s so damn good, but see that all these fun-less indie types that Hadouken! have been taking the piss out of are standing right next to you, so you don’t because then you would feel stupid. Oh the irony! Lead singer James calls them ‘nemos’; new-wave-emos, and I am left wondering whether that is a compliment or not. After all, everyone hates emos don’t they?

This then makes me think; is Britain ready for this kind of music? Times are such that new-wave indie bands are formulating a new image-conscious genre that has caught so many people up in its skinny jean chic. Hadouken! seem to exist as a retro-cool band, that is they are only cool because they refer to what was not cool in the past. However, they seem to be the antithesis of the modern indie culture and as such are making fun of something that is cool, before it has become uncool. Perhaps if this music were around several years later, when skinny jeans just look uncomfortable for the groin, the irony would be better conveyed. For the meantime it seems that the people Hadouken! seek to parody, constitute the majority of their audience, in Newcastle at least.

Nevertheless, Academy 2 is more colourful than usual, and certainly a good deal sweatier. The sheer eccentricity seems to carry the band through songs like 'Tuning In' and debut single 'That Boy That Girl' which seem to defy any kind of textual interpretation. They essentially scribbled “F**K YOU!” all over my journalistic mind in huge UV capitals. But I can’t hate them, I can only admire them as they grind out dirty beat after dirty beat and smile upon smile.

So the ‘80s are back and now I love them. They bring a previously lost sense of individuality and freedom to modern life and carry an important moral of self-enjoyment. We should salute Hadouken! for saving us from the dourness of modern existence and reminding us of the unparalleled fun of the past. Now where did I put my Rubik’s Cube?

article by: James Robinson

published: 06/06/2007 18:04

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.
 

more about Hadouken!
more about O2 Academy (1 & 2), Newcastle upon Tyne