Hadouken! are a British five-piece Electronic/Indie band. Which one generally depends on the album in question. They started in 2006.
Members:
- James Smith - Lead vocals and electronics
- Alice Spooner - Synthesiser
- Daniel "Pilau" Rice - Guitar, keyboards and backing vocals
- Christopher Purcell - Bass, keyboards and backing vocals
- Nick Rice - Drums
As of this writing, they've released three albums, Music for an Accelerated Culture in 2008, For the Masses in 2010, and Every Weekend in 2013. They also released three EPs, Mixtape, Not Here to Please You and Love, Sweat and Beer in 2007.
In November 2014 they announced a hiatus. James is currently producing a solo project, and Dan, Nick, and Chris are members of Cast of Lions alongside Stefan Abingdon of The Midnight Beast.
Hadouken have examples of:
- Album Title Drop: Every Weekend is their first album to do this, being dropped in the first song, "Vortex".
- Animated Music Video: "Mecha Love"
, which uses footage from Appleseed. There's also an alternate video of "Oxygen" featuring Stop Motion animation of Action Man figures. - The Artifact: Dan, Nick and Chris. They haven't been on a new song since 2010. Though they're still full members of the band, and live arrangements are switched around to feature them. This isn't a case of them being hated, just that the band's main output is electronic music, not rock.
- Cover Version: They've covered Blur's "Song 2".
- Crunkcore: Not exactly, but the Nu-Rave scene was basically the UK equivalent.
- Darker and Edgier: Once per album:
- Leap of Faith during the EP era, their only experiment with a straight up rock song.
- Declaration of War on MFAAC.
- Evil on For the Masses
- The Vortex on Every Weekend
- Genre Shift:
- Their EP era was New-Rave done ironically. Borders on Early-Installment Weirdness
- Their first album mixed re-recordings of these songs with Electronic Rock
- Their second album drops the rock elements, aside from lead single "Turn the Lights Out".
- Their third album mixes in Dubstep and Drum and Bass with the previous electronic sound.
- Their newest song Midnight is House Music.
- Harsh Vocals: On a lot of songs live, the general shouts are replaced with these.
- I Am the Band: Not much, but every time James is a guest vocalist, he's credited as Hadouken!.
- Lyrical Dissonance: A way to tell if a fan listens to the lyrics is if they think they were serious with the New Rave era.
- Mood Whiplash: On Music for an Accelerated Culture, as the New Rave songs were dotted around the more serious electronic songs.
- New Sound Album: All of them, even the first one.
- Performance Video:
- Most of the videos before their third album.
- Subverted nowadays. Their last performance video was released in 2011 (not counting live videos) and highlighted a problem. Neither Chris nor Dan actually do anything on that album, so they were just stood there playing keyboards (which is actually Alice's job).
- Pretty Boy:
- The male members of the band before late 2009 all had sweep fringes and effeminate clothing. However these days:
- Chris and Nick have quiffs.
- James has short hair.
- Dan has grown his hair out.
- Rearrange the Song: Live versions of the Every Weekend tracks feature guitars and bass replacing some of the keyboard layers, and live drums on a semi-acoustic kit as opposed to the programmed drumming on albums.
- Also, any remix they do can feel like this, as James tends to add his own verses, sometimes changing the perspective of the song.
- Take That!: Their first song "Superstar" is a take that at... someone named Luke (he was in another band, but that band didn't become famous enough for anyone to remember who the song was actually about.)
- The Quiet One: Alice, deliberately or not, wasn't heard speaking until a brief moment in Blogdouken 18, nearly 6 years into their career.
- Piss-Take Rap: a lot, though James can rap, and has done so more seriously on recent songs.
- Record Producer: James, who previously made straight Grime music under the name Dr Venom.
- Stealth Parody: People thought they were serious with their partying Indie Rock image. Probably why they changed it.
