SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SCENE.

If three years ago I knew what the fuck a 'blog' was and had ever felt inclined to write a post about my local music scene I would have been at odds to present you with anything decent. Now for some reason I am spoilt for choice. I was also hoping to be in the best band that ever came from Bushey I did some research. But then again maybe not.

2007. And this is no longer the case.

You may be well aware that I have been based in Leeds, but for the whole of this football season, when asked in an interview I have referred to my native region of origin as the south east. Watford you see, kicked Leeds United out of a chance to grace the Premiership. If I was a fucking hard nut, I would have proclaimed my origins sooner. But I am now living back in my humble town so I may walk the streets without fear of castration/stoning/ or even the thought of being taken to the Gallows

The Gallows

I was made aware of this bunch by Jon Kennedy in an interview on XFM and promised him I would check them out. Thanks Jon, they are innately valid (that's an intra-band joke... Hadouken Dictionary to come soon on these pages) But to the point. There is a serious lack of hardcore with-and-without a capital H to have made waves within the UK over the past couple of years (thanks for this 'The Strokes'.) Gallows seem to have bucked this trend and justifiably so. I recognise a few of their faces from my Watford Skater/Alt Minority/Metaller Teenager/School days (i flipped between townie and metaller frequently- its emo and chav now though isn't it?) I think at least one attended my school but probably in a few years above. So did these sik fuckers.

Wow I am part of a credible geographical location based scene. Well... maybe I could pass off myself of as a member of 'the best band from the region to mix rock and dance music'.

Oh... they're from St Albans round the corner apparently.

SO anyway... There is a thriving art/music/cultural scene in Watford and Bushey. These links are also worth your time.

DIY WOMP

These guys put on art shows, music nights and anything in between and do it well. I think they put on one of Kate Nash's second gigs in a back garden. Imagine the tales you could have told your hipster friends if you had been to that. Also check Crackin' Festival. I couldn't for the life of me find a link though.


There are some Tidy Graphic designers based in Bushey too. I discovered this site for some clothes that rep my manor. Fuck Rocawear, Sean John etc... s'all about Bushey Clothing.

Finally I came back this month to find the best bar in town had closed. It was a hub for all things alternative/creative/accepting even if the drinks prices sometimes suffered from that nasty South-East England inflation. RIP Taylors Bar. My move back home may shed some light onto what is going down over the summer. So expect another post in a couple of months.

JAMES X X X X

ALBUM TITLE.

FUCK.

I just found out what Arctic Monkeys's next album is titled.

(Favourite Worst Nightmare)

There goes that album \/\/\/\/\/ idea down the shitter.

Alex Turner and co... Why have they got to out-do, out-strip and out-class every other fucking band in Britain? I was hoping for a difficult second album, but judging from the likes of Brianstorm and the previews on Youtube this will not be the case.

LIVE THE DREAM, HERE IS THE NIGHTMARE.

^^^Ohh... potential album title there.





Lots of material to edit down from our trusted handicam. Here is the first portion of chips.

Hadouken! mix on Radio1

Click here to hear James' mix.

Tracklisting:

Bloc Party- ‘The Prayer (Hadouken! Remix)’ (Wichita)
Like Woah!- ‘Oh I Like (Woah!)’ (Unknown)
David E Sugar Feat. Ears- ‘First OK’ (Brikabrak]
Wiley- ‘Eskiboy’ (Boy Better Know)
Plan B- ‘No More Eatin’ (Hadouken! Remix)’ (679 Recordings)
Virus Syndicate- ‘Red Eyes’ (Dubplate)
TNT- ‘Transmission’ (Outlaw Breaks)
Skepta feat Wiley, JME, Creed- ‘Duppy’ (Boy Better Know)
The Klaxons - ‘Atlantis to Interzone (Hadouken! Remix)’ (Merok)
Bolt Action Five - ‘Tree Friend Tree Foe (Kissy Sell Out Remix)’ (No Pain In Pop)
Hadouken!- ‘Tuning In (Re-Rub Dub)’ (Surface Noise Recordings)
Uffie - ‘Ready To Uff’ (Ed Banger)
Kate Nash - ‘Caroline is a Victim’ (Unknown)
Mr Ozio - ‘Flatbeat’ (Unknown)
The Klaxons - ‘Golden Skans (David E Sugar Remix)’ (Polydor)
Justice - ‘Phantom’ (Ed Banger)
Fox N Wolf- ‘Youth Alcoholic’ (Unknown)
Radioclit - ‘Mature Macho Machine (Solid Groove and Sinden Remix)’ (Unknown)
The Gossip - ‘Standing in the Way of Control (Soulwax Remix)’ (Unknown)
Test Icicles - ‘Catch It’ (Domino)
Jixilix? - ‘Go!’ (Dubplate)
Hadouken! - ‘That Boy That Girl (Demo)’ (Surface Noise)

Hadouken! on Beat Stevie

So last month we played Shepherds Bush with Plan B. After the gig we took it upon ourselves to take full advantage of whatever free alochol was provided and swan about the VIP bar acting like rockstars. This was all going well until we bumped into Example, Mike Skinner and Ted Mayhem who wanted to interview us for their youtube chanel, Beat Stevie...oh dear...



In other news,

Tiger Force have announced their mini-album...

our friends at Mute Magazine are helping us put together the long overdue first volume of Messthetics, more news on that soon, the first issue of Mute mag is available around Liverpool this week...

our new mates Pull Tiger Tail introduced us to Street Fighter the Later Years...

we made a new myspace for our remixes...

Silverlink is DJing at All Ages Concerts gig with The Presets, metronomy and the teenagers on 5th april...

James got 174 lines on tetris, (if any bands fancy themselves in a head to head tag team tetris competition step up, you will loose.)

Hot Topic.

There's been alot of debate about us on a few music forums recently. Theres some really intelligent discussion especially at Dissensus.

(Disclaimer: To the average Hadouken fan. Please don't feel the need to go sign up to the forums to defend us in any way. Its perfectly healthy discussion.)

Although we have accounts with the various forums, won't be replying to any of these posts, basically because if we start we could be there all year responding, and we know how forum debates can sometimes go.

First off I guess I pre-empted this reaction the moment I realised our first single was going to be a sucess. First off I have never wanted to have been seen to press ourselves on the Grime scene. I'm not talking about taking influence. I feel I have every right to take influence from anything I want, be it punk of 76, jungle of 95, uk garage or grime. But the scene itself I understandably don't feel part of. Thats why I have told our radio plugger not to push our beats to urban shows, and thats why you wont be hearing any Grime remixes, or collaborations despite the suprising offers we have had from a few known grime acts. We put out our single on our own little indie label on un-dj-friendly 7inch. We let it be downloaded for free for six months (no concerns about jingle free radio rips) and it sold out on personal pre-orders.


Grime production is in my blood. If something like That Boy That Girl, listens as an ironic pastiche of Grime, then this is disheartening to me, because if anything it was intended to be a nod, to pay homage to the genre that I am massive fan of. The tracks you have heard were sequenced and made in a bedroom on fruityloops. Since then we have managed to expand our sound and get some fully live recordings done. All I can say is that the album will make more sense, and will probably be less offensive to the grime purists in terms of direction and influence. I will be posting up a live clip on the myspace in the next couple of days, check it if you care.


I have no problem with anyone on the underground who hates the music for what it is. If you think its shit then it is shit. My flows can't compete with the Grime boys (and girls) who have established themselves with years of experience and graft on the pirate circuit. I havent had that and I never will. It will feel diluted to a purists ears. But nothing in our sound was compromised. Maybe I have it in me to come out with pop, some of my grime edged towards this (Not Wise anyone?) The reason its getting support? No major label has touched us yet so its not corporate sponsorship. I'd put it down to a good radio plugger, decent management, and the buzz of myspace.


It is out of my hands if the trend/mainstream press pick up on it all. If it means I can make music for a living then I'll carry on sending them my tunes. Even some of the style bible magazines that picked up and ditched grime so quickly have published articles that are quick to write us off and dismiss us as the white kids from Watford who don't have a clue. But I'll get over it.



So I cant compete with the flows. However I do feel I can compete elsewhere on a level, with the four highly competent musicans who back me on duel synths, guitar and bass guitar and full drumkit and triggers as supposed to a stale set of two CDJs or an instrumental dubplate. They are the reason we have been getting gigs, not because we are white. If one of the big dogs in grime could clock this 'live music' potential then I am sure they could make far bigger waves than us. Gigs sell records in the indie world. They also account for a far larger proportion of an artists incomings, especially in these days of the mp3. Maybe grime shouldnt concern itself with uploads and piracy when its key demographic doesn't actually buy music now anyway regardless of genre. How about a grime act going on stage at 8pm in a live venue rather than 2am in a club when everybody is pissed up and ready to kick off? This is not for want to change grime for what it is. Just a suggestion to ways of drawing capital which is essential for its survival.



If anyone ever came out with the statement that JME had catted my flow I would be the first person who would have to swallow-back vomit. But thankfully I don't see that happening as of yet. I've lost count of the ammount of Boy Better Know teeshirts I've seen young, white 'indie' kids wearing at our gigs. Hopefully thats well deserved revenue in his pocket. I'm thinking of the 14 year old Welsh kid who came up to us wearing one after a gig in Manchester.



One day I will be able to reveal all of how our story happened. I'm keeping a diary of every movement we have made in the music industry since day dot. I can't reveal for the time being until we are finally signed. I can accept that institutional racism is still rife within british society. However, the only thing that united the typically creative, maybe liberal industry a&r men (of various colour and probably sexuality) was the fact that they liked our tracks and the fact that we were doing something ever so slightly different to other bands. Slightly different... something we had originally set out to do.

Yours,

James Hadouken! (annoying front man)
Dr Venom (Ex-grime producer)
James Smith (Garage/Grime/Dubstep/Indie/Punk/Metal/Pop fan)

Democratising the Beat

Alright people,

long-time no post. We have been busy to say the least. Anyway I thought I would return to the blog on the tip of other bloggers whom I admire, namely Woebot, Blissblog and Martin @ Blackdown, who take an intelligent and critical angle on contemporary musical genres. I thought this excerpt from a piece of research I am doing at the moment is worth your time. Its about Grime and the democracy of production that desktop PCs and Consoles offered to the younger generation of Garage fans.

Incidentally Blackdown has a published an interview I conducted with him for the very same piece of research.

Throughout Popular Music’s history the materialization of many genres and scenes can be attributed to developments of technologies that have assisted the making or distribution of music. Acid House, a forbearer of Grime itself was a product of the new availability of drum machines, synthesizers and advances in computer memory in the mid-to-late 1980s. (Collins, 1999, passim) The emergence of the white label, a cheap to process 12-inch acetate vinyl, decorated with the minimum of effort (or ‘white label’ as it were) revolutionised the distribution of dance music singles around the same time whilst offering the staple format for dance tracks ever since. (ibid.) It is true that countless UK Garage and many Grime artists have utilised this very same low cost production method to establish themselves early in their career, abolishing the need for a full fledged, professional record label.

The emergence of Grime directly corresponds with two technological revolutions. The first falls within the process of music making and positioned the power of production into the hands of more disadvantaged and often younger followers. Developments in desktop personal computers coupled with the availability of pirated music-making software on the internet gave a new generation the power to construct musical arrangements at an affordable cost. Software based applications such as Fruityloops and Reason which required no more than standard PC and a set of speakers gave the power to amateur music-makers, despite having no previous knowledge of musical production. This lack of musical know-how had a detrimental effect on the musical output of the pioneers of Grime as the traditional strictures and doctrines of previous genres of dance were thrown out the window, undoubtedly having an effect on genetics of the UK Garage genre. The youthful and innately techno-literate subcultural followers inevitably self-taught themselves the skills to produce the music that they saw fit. Beats and melodies were now constructed from scratch, based purely on the feel and the temperament of the producer and ushered in an new era of sound and sonical temperament.

Videogame consoles offered another outlet of production for these new beat-smiths. A series of titles under the moniker of ‘Music’ were released on the Sony Playstation a massively popular home-console. The game allowed the user to manipulate musical loops and create tracks using the control-pad and a block-building interface. It was allegedly on this software where the seminal track ‘Pulse X’ by the Musical Mob was created. One of the first success stories to emerge from Grime was Dylan Mills or Dizzee Rascal as his MC personality was to be known, apparently using Music on the Playstation to create beats. Nick Hugget the man who discovered Dizzee Rascal and the A&R of XL Recordings recalled to me a time when the young Mills brought his tracks on a mere Playstation memory card to a professional studio during the early stages of recording his Mercury Prize Winning Album, ‘Boy In the Corner’.

If anyone ever asks me what drew me to my mild obsession with Grime in its early days I guess this could explain it. It affected me on two fronts, not only was I fascinated with the unravelling of the strictures and dogmas of UK Garage by the countless juvenile producers, but the fact that I could engage with the process myself with not more than the family PC, Limewire and broadband connection. Who would have thought you could make dance music (as UK Garage still was back then) without beats? [Wiley- Eskimo 2] And what the fuck was Ice Rink all about? Were they beats or was that just melody. Wonders 'What' seemingly used four elements to create a dystopian masterpiece, which braced me for the dubstep I was to encounter next. I downloaded Fruityloops in 2001 and I'm still hooked. I still don't believe I have touched the surface of musical production, Hadouken pop-songs are essentially 2-bit in comparison to the potential of digital production, with the imagination and correct know-how. Saying that, 2-bits is all any good pop song requires.

(Some of you may have noticed that back there I say there were two revolutions that occured within Grimes early days. The other for the record is the mp3 as the first valid digital format and the catalyst for piracy, diffusion of geographical underpinnings and something of an assault on dubplate culture, but I haven't finished that section yet.)