Dada Life - The Rules Of Dada

Posted on Oct 16, 2012 in Bangers, Big Room House, Electro House, Hardstyle

YES! The Rules Of Dada is here. Time to celebrate. We’ve been getting releases and previews of the album for months and now it is all ours in all of its electrified manic madness. Dada Life serves up eleven delicious electro-house sausages (just go with it), fattened to the pinnacle of sonic engineering. Although four of the tracks (‘Kick Out The Epic Motherfucker’, ‘Feed The Dada’, ‘Happy Violence’, ‘Rolling Stones T-Shirt’) were already released as separate EPs, there are still seven entirely new reasons to do the dada.

‘Arrive Beautiful Leave Ugly’ - The first of the new tracks recalls the simplistic intensity of Dada Life’s previous hit ‘White Noise, Red Meat’. A solitary saw top-line drills out a three-note melody for the song’s entirety. Gradually a series of heart-stopping crashes, stabs, impacts, and basslines join the ranks and charge forth on a relentless, grinding assault on your eardrums. This track is gigantic.

‘So Young So High’ - This track falls into the vocal-driven pop style that Dada Life has been experimenting with lately. I’m not the biggest fan of the pitched vox layered atop the chorus. The overall effect sounds like a blend of happy hardcore and electro, something out of Dance Dance Revolution. Even though the instrumental goes hard, it still isn’t strong enough comparatively to retrieve this track from its cheesy abyss.

‘You Will Do What We Will Do’ - Now here were can observe a slight divergence from the typical Dada Life formula. The execution is not perfect, but I like to see them trying to mix it up. The bitspeek vocal breakdown has a very Daft Punk feel (I guess that can be said of all robotic vocoders) and overall the track has some deeper and darker elements not often present in their usual production.

‘Bass Don’t Cry’ - I’ve been looking forward to this one ever since Dada Life teased it on their youtube page. Right off the bat, we’re sent into a fast-paced electro house tailspin, plummeting along an invigorating, staccato chord progression. The bass rushes past in energized bursts and save a brief moment of respite during the breakdown, this is by far the most exciting track on the album. Felix Baumgartner would have achieved warp speed if he had popped this one on the ol’ iPod last weekend.

‘Everything Is Free’ - Despite the vocalists sounding like Nicki Minaj, this is yet another enormous record. Nothing to really distinguish it from the rest, but if you’re looking to drop some Dada Life in your set without the cop out anthems, ‘Everything Is Free’ is definitely the ringer of the bunch.

‘Boing Clash Boom’ - This is probably the most ridiculous song on The Rules Of Dada. The vocals are absurd and the drop… well it’s hardstyle… so, you know. No matter what you think of it though, this track captures the true dada essence of the group 100%.

‘Don’t Stop’ - At present, the final track is actually my favorite on the album. Defying the odds, Dada Life is able to draw out emotions other than lunacy and insanity. ‘Don’t Stop’ has a disaffected charm which really differentiates it from anything else the duo has ever done. An echoing male vocalist serenades us to a euphoric progressive house drop that for once doesn’t lean as heavily on exaggerated basslines and explosions. It was fantastic way to wrap up ‘The Rules Of Dada’ and definitely positions the duo well to begin diversifying their sound in the future.

The Rules Of Dada is a great milestone for Dada Life. They could’ve easily stretched out every track on this album into another full year of single releases, but instead they chose to give us a fully-packaged album, which will keep us all raging well into our golden years. Although it suffers here and there from a lack of variety, there is no denying that it is still a solid release. With such an amazing discography already behind them, I can’t wait to see what Dada Life does next. Purchase the entire abum on iTunes now.

STARTING A WEB SITE? Get $5.99 .COM domains.