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Something is up with music these days. Just the other week we were telling you about bands shunning release schedules and hype, and now we have a band in the fluro coloured guise of Hadouken! flinging conventional methodologies of music production out the window, by coming out with a release in the form of a USB stick. On top of that, they’ve been known to play virtual festivals and boast a mental moshing fan base gathered from cyberspace, who you really would not want to cross. Is everyone just trying to subvert the mainstream? Gigwise caught up with all five members of Hadouken! (James, Alice, Pilau, Chris and Nick) at Atlantic HQ to get the (non-RSS) feed on their digital revolution.
It’s been a good year for Hadouken!; their success self releasing has accumulated a cult following and some great press, which led to them being signed by Atlantic Records back in April – round about the last time we caught up with them. Their signing couldn’t have come at a better time, with three core members finishing university and hoping to converge their musical outpourings into a full time career without the distraction of overdue essays. Speaking to them today, Hadouken! are clearly happy with the label, who appear to be keeping the development of the band organic. Guitarist Pilau puts this down to Atlantic respecting the band’s needs by letting the band’s fan base grow naturally without the aid of mass advertising. James contributes this to them keeping it ‘indie.’
He explains: “They’ve kept the team really small. We only deal with about four or five people so it feels really indie. A lot of the labels talk the talk and can flash their cash but at the end of the day (we chose Atlantic) because when we were doing gigs we had the team coming down and saying ‘I just want to see your gig because I’m into you as a band’ and they seemed the most passionate.” Pilau adds, “You can tell so quickly who understands what you’re doing and what you want to do. The label is academic really; it’s about finding those four or five people you want to work with.”
So with the ink dried on the Atlantic contracts those boys and that girl have decided to release a mixtape in digital format. James notes, “We had a whole bunch of tracks and we wanted to get them out there without rushing an album. There’s a demand for new material from us, since we haven’t released anything for a while, and we wanted to give something back to the fans, whilst buying a bit of time to write the album. We’ve got quite a digitally literate fan base which we’ve built up on the internet so it made sense that the people who are into us would probably be able to understand this format. It’s not that groundbreaking nor is it probably about the future of music either.” The title ‘Not Here to Please You’ is taken from a lyric and signifies to the band that they are not doing it to either please or appease any of their critics.
CLICK HERE to see our EXCLUSIVE Hadouken! video from the London Astoria
Saying that, their single, ‘Leap of Faith’ (which is doing the rounds on mainstream radio play lists at the moment), exhibits an obvious hardcore influence that other bands like Enter Shikari have also incorporated into their sound; is this indicative of the criticism the band have faced for appropriating grime sounds? Some critics have ousted them as stealers of black people’s music. James defends the band’s sound, “Just as much as we are criticised, we get a bit of praise and respect for doing something different. The people who criticise us are usually white journalists not grime artists themselves, who have been wicked to us, and say ‘who are we not to tell you to do it?’ kind of thing… (with the single) it was a case of going right everyone thinks we’re grindie or in a new rave band and we talk about scenesters and we’ve got no soul, so how can we write lyrics from the heart which doesn’t have much grime influence in it? And that’s what we did. We wanted to put it out to make the statement that you can’t expect a certain track from us really.”
Hadouken! have been ridiculed in the press for being a wannabe ‘new rave’ band (honestly, it makes us feel a bit nauseous to use the term); this may be something to do with the band’s apparel; in the comfy confines of Atlantic HQ, the band are dressed in their signature skinny jeaned/ fluro hoody combos; but do they feel that such a label is deserved? James comments, “Right at the beginning we said we weren’t new rave but as the year’s gone on, we’ve seen a scene actually develop. It started off quite synthetically with promoters booking certain bands that don’t even sound like each other but when you go on tours, all these bands know each other and there’s people going out with people from other bands, and relationships are building; it suddenly becomes a scene… it’s all interesting and forward thinking music.” Pilau adds, “Its all bands that we’re really happy to be associated with such as Klaxons, Late of the Pier, Does it Offend You Yeah and Sunshine Underground. If that’s what people want to call new rave, then we’re proud to be a part of it.”
What is next for Hadouken! will they be usurping the Gallows on a grime collaboration? James says, “With us, I don’t feel the need to do it because I think we’ve got enough of a grime influence in there. The Arctic Monkeys and Dizzee Rascal collaboration was great because it was the two heavyweights of both scenes (grime and indie). I think it’s only healthy for music. It’s definitely important that if people want to find out what grime is don’t come to us. We just take a little bit of influence from it and do our own thing, and it works for us really. (The term grindie) is a conjunction between grime and indie and our music is a conjunction of grime and indie but it’s also got drum and bass and punk and metal in there but you don’t hear those mentioned because they’re white musics. We’re just an indie rock band there’s no doubt about it.”
So Hadouken! Indie rock? Grime? Grindie? New Rave? Who knows?! With their eclectic and superfluously developing sound, they’re certainly not going anywhere, collecting armies of digitally obsessed youngsters like a fluro coloured steam roller. Klaxons? Pah! They’re so last year. Catch Hadouken! on tour now, or nab yourself a copy of their USB mixtape out November 12.
CLICK HERE to see our EXCLUSIVE Hadouken! video from the London Astoria
