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 E Ps, 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.
- Audience Participation Song: "Mic Check"
- Bishōnen:
- 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.
- 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
- Excited Show Title!
- Large Ham: James during live performances and Blogdouken.
- Genre Roulette
- 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).
- 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.
