Formed in 2004, Fuck Buttons is two guys - Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power. They make... music. Fascinating music. At the basest level, it's electronic music, but it's not electronic music like you generally think of.
Whereas the standard modus operandi for electronic music is lots of big beats and heavy bass drops, Fuck Buttons are more interested in environmental soundscapes, but never in a trance-y sort of way. They build soundtracks for movies that don't exist, but not movies that any humans would've made. This is machine music, for machines, by machines, of machines. Their music is full of fizzes, crackles, pops, hums, static, organ croons, swizzling guitars, burbling synth banks, cosmic twinkle and a bunch of vocal samples that are so cut up, they could be signals from Mars.
Fuck Buttons first album, "Street Horrrsing," was wonderful, but was also wildly uneven. That was part of its charm, but it was disconcerting to get howls and shrieks mixed in with the lovely soundscapes. Still, there was an immense amount of potential there. But it wasn't until their second album, "Tarot Sport," that the band connected on all cylinders for me.
For "Tarot Sport," the band enlisted sonic craftsman Andrew Weatherall, who helped them center their music and focus on all the things they were doing right while sanding off some of the bits that were just getting in the way. As a result, "Tarot Sport" is all of the things that I liked on "Street Horrrsing" turned up to 11. Full of long songs, the album demands repeated listening. Keep in mind, the videos I'm going to share are directed by Andrew Hung (half of the band), but are only subsections of the full song.
The first one is "Surf Solar," what can only be described as hypnotically bouncing.
"Surf Solar" was the moment I knew I had to have this album. It hit about two months before the album went on sale, but I listened to the hell out of just this subsection. You can hear that vocal sample so heavily clipped as to be just another instruments, and the weird scratching thumps that curl into the song, and yet that almost TRON-like heavenly hum remains, soaring above it all.
After the album dropped, though, I found it was the majestic "Olympians" that I adored most of all. Again, keep in mind that this is just a subsection of the song. The full version runs 10:43.
"Olympians" is like Vangelis, Mogwai and The Chemical Brothers decided to have a musical child. It's the sound of a new dawn on a majestic desert landscape. It's an IMAX song, so widescreen that you're having to turn your head, just to see another part of it. It's the closing credits of a movie so hard warming that even the most jaded cynic would say "You know, I think we're all going to be okay after all. We might just make it." The track even made it into the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, in a sort of weird self-fulfilling prophecy.
The band's third album, "Slow Focus," dropped last year, and it's also amazing, but it's got a slightly higher barrier to entry, as the songs aren't quite as immediately accessible. It's still a great album, but it's not where I'd recommend people start with. If you find you like "Tarot Sport," then by all means, pick up "Slow Focus."
Also of note - apparently talking about Fuck Buttons makes me something of a hipster, which I get, but reject, because I've seen My Bloody Valentine live twice, and that has to even out.
No comments:
Post a Comment