Fuck Buttons
BIOGRAPHY -
Fuck Buttons are a two-piece electronic group formed in Bristol, England early in 2004 by Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power.
Hung and Power (Hung and Power!) grew up in Worcester, and both wrote music while growing up. Hung was influenced by Aphex Twin, while Power was a fan of post-rock bands like Mogwai. They developed a friendship in 2004 while attending art school in Bristol, and began working together, initially to create the soundtrack to a film made by Hung. Immediately after forming, they played live whenever possible, soon amassing a cult following.
The duo signed to All Tomorrow's Parties-affiliated ATP Recordings in 2007, and released a limited-edition 7" single named ‘Bright Tomorrow’, combined with an upsurge in reviews of their live performances at the Supersonic, Truck and Portishead-curated ATP festivals in the second half of 2007, this attention resulted in Fuck Buttons being included in many end of year newspaper, magazine and online articles predicting them as a 'Hot Tip' for 2008.
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Thank you Wikipedia. It’s Monday morning, I’m too tired to pretend I wrote the boring stuff myself.
Like any noise group, Fuck Buttons rely on a certain amount of vulgarity and aggression, but rather than coming from an oppositional stance, the band’s interest in exploring these divisive sounds come from a sense of discovery, of excitement. As they say, “the impetus that drives our music is our profound interest in exploration, we explore sounds through inconsistent methods and filter them through our sensibilities”. This filters not only across their music, but into their whole presentation – all of their design work is created by the band themselves, Andrew makes the videos (see below) and Benjamin designs the record sleeves.
On stage they stand at opposite ends of two tables – the kind that you probably used as a desk at secondary school – laid heavy with a banquet of electrical equipment, bleeping machines, battered synths and old children’s toys. As their vast, corrosive swathes of electronic sound, weirdly euphoric melodies and clattering rhythms taunt and pummel the living air, the two musicians look utterly lost in their aural landscape, their heads bobbing frantically, eyes locked in contact, speaking silently through minute gesticulations. Since the release of Tarot Sport Power has also developed an impressively baroque way of playing a drum – a single floor Tom that stands to the edge of their Medusa-hair mess of cables – with much elaborate flinging of arms and ecstatic shaking of head.
This balance of performance is what essentially made Tarot Sport such an enormously successful cross-over record, that whilst it was still a lucid, cerebral pilgrimage of the experimental aesthetic of 2008’s critically acclaimed debut, Street Horrrsing, the album had an irresistible performative edge – it wanted to do more than excite people to thought, it wanted to make them dance the f**k up.
Opening track ‘Surf Solar’ builds and builds from a musical-box opening to dense clouds of sound, anxious and menacing by comparison but hits those notes without the histrionics of Fuck Buttons' previous work. As an introduction to what could ostensibly be a difficult and complex album it is remarkably direct, an enveloping track of unbound possibility that refines, crafts and explores that strange gap between electronic dance music and Mogwai’s surging power that their music inhabits, dragging it squealing closer to the penumbra of dance music with a simple 4/4 kick.
Tarot Sport represented a subtler, more mature approach to songwriting and a sharpening of their craft. But more so, it marks a comprehensive stylistic shift for the duo's sound, from experimental noise with a buried pop sensibility to a sort of modernized electronic take on classic post-rock structures, made the more audible by Powers’ proffesed love of said post-rock titans, Mogwai. Impressively, they've made these changes without sacrificing any of the genre-straddling adventurousness that made them intriguing in the first place.
The band has always had an inclination toward sweeping epics (‘Sweet Love for Planet Earth’), but instead of using scale as a canvas for brutality/delicacy contrasts, here they repurpose the post-rock format as a digital soundscape. Gone are the shrieks and wailing guitar chords of Street Horrrsing; instead these songs are built almost wholly with synth and keyboard textures that originate in dance music.
The record inhabits a subliminal space, one of ambiguity that manifests itself in the individual’s heart and mind. It is open enough to allow thought to shift and grow within it, but still caustic and vitriolic, allowing for a reciprocal experience with the record, one which you can find yourself driving in and out of throughout the length of the it. As the band claimed, it allows you to “create your own narrative”.
TOUR DATES -
29 Apr 2010 - Donau Festival Krems
1 May 2010 - Powiekszenie Warsaw
2 May 2010 - Jazz club Hipnoza Katowice
3 May 2010 - Meet Factory Prague
4 May 2010 - Felda Brno
11 May 2010 - Troubadour Los Angeles, California
12 May 2010 - Great American Music Hall San Francisco, California
13 May 2010 - Doug Fir Portland, Oregon
14 May 2010 - Biltmore Vancouver, British Columbia
15 May 2010 - Sugar Victoria, British Columbia
16 May 2010 - Chop Suey Seattle, Washington
19 May 2010 - Horseshoe Toronto, Ontario
20 May 2010 - Il Motore Montreal, Quebec
21 May 2010 - Music Hall Of Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York
22 May 2010 - Le Poisson Rouge Manhattan, New York
27 May 2010 - Primavera Festival Barcelona
6 Jun 2010 - Villette Sonique Fest Paris
11 Jun 2010 - Hartera Festival Rijeka
18 Jun 2010 - Sonar Fest La Coruna
19 Jun 2010 - Sonar Fest Barcelona
20 Aug 2010 - Green Man Festival Crickhowell
4 Sep 2010 - ATP New York 2010 at Kutshers Country Club Monticello, New York
LINKS -
Fuck Buttons on MySpace
Interview on Pitchfork
VIDEOS -
Fuck Buttons – interviewed by DazedDigital
Fuck Buttons – Surf Solar
Fuck Buttons – Sweet Love for Planet Earth live @ SXSW
words and thoughts by Samuel Smith