Fuck Buttons, the London based duo of Andrew Hung and Benjamin Power, are interesting to say the least. They arrived on the scene in 2008 with debut Street Horrrsing and took many people quite by surprise; an outfit that vaguely associates itself with Noise, Drone and Neo-Psychedelic that call themselves “Fuck Buttons” sounds like something you might not necessarily take too seriously, but the actual result is something altogether more unique and compelling and tickled both reviewers and the public alike. Their debut was raw and potent, with rushes of noise balanced against less crucial but bold beats to tie it together, whilst the sophomore album Tarot Sport decided to take a slightly less noisy approach and focus down a little more on the interesting structures and rhythms they played with before. With this in mind, and I urge you not to be scared of listening to these guys just because of the genre tags (especially if you have an interest in dance and electronic), let’s give their latest (edited) single a listen:
Warning, loud and quite sudden start!
In true Fuck Buttons style, the opening is immediately brash, even obnoxious, the foreground dominated by abrasive noise but unlike previous efforts (and I’m sure many will be thankful for this even though I do personally feel somewhat spoiled) we arent graced with titanic walls of noise, at least, not at first. Red Wing is quite happy to coast for the first minute or so and just let the easygoing beats play out and give some kind of a feeling of evolution, those syncopated backing synths slowly picking up confidence and attitude as the track slowly begins to spiral to some kind of crescendo. Those sparkling little riffs start to delicately dance before those vast, oscillating Blanck Mass-esque drones begin to appear and introduce some euphoria into the mix and then suddenly we have our faces literally blown off with those HUGE beats at 2:29, a searing pulse of spine-tingling plasma that just barrels through the piece, threatening to overwhelm all the other components in a tidal wave of coarse and intoxicating electronica before we fade rapidly to black.
It has everything you could ask for; those vast vistas of drone and noise to give it that quintessential Fuck Buttons grandeur, those gigantic basslines that get your whole body tapping and those little finishing touches in the dancing, syncopated synth riffs to just top it all off. I love it, and this is only 3 minutes of the real deal, we can almost certainly expect a 9 minute titan of a track with the original. I for one am extremely excited for this release now, dropping 22nd July on ATP Records.