Hadouken! - Music for an Accelerated Culture

01. Get Smashed Gate Crash  
02. That Boy That Girl  
03. Game Over  
04. Declaration of War  
05. Mister Misfortune  
06. Crank It Up  
07. What She Did  
08. Driving Nowhere  
09. Liquid Lives  
10. Spend Your Life  
11. Wait for You

The so-called new rave scene has been responsible for spewing out a load of old meaningless tosh since it was coined by desperate music journalists two years ago, but its latest wrong comes in the form of the debut album from one of the genre’s most hyped bands. Singles like ‘That Boy That Girl’ and ‘Liquid Lives’ showed great promise for Hadouken!, but Music For an Accelerated Culture is a cheesy, clinical-sounding musical mess complete with cringey lyrics, painful Nintendo melodies, pumping dance beat-tinged ballads and abhorrent screamo vocals, stamping out any potential their energetic grime punk live shows once displayed.

Great things can come from combining computers, keyboards and pretentious haircuts, however. Just look at the Leeds-based fivesome’s Atari-loving counterparts Crystal Castles’, whose first offering is a really rather sublime example of modern electronic music in its scratchy blips, high-pitched bleeps, icy rhythms, screeches and shrieks. Some may argue that similar creations have been made through Addadat Records for years now, but no band on their roster has yet come up with an offering that rivals the melodic and sonic achievements of the Canadian duo on this staggering record. Crystal Castles proves that it is indeed possible to have both outstanding substance and style...www.thelist.co.uk