I didn't really have a set agenda when starting this blog; who knows where this will take me, or what tangents I'll head off. This blog will certainly be music-centric, and for the foreseeable future I'll be writing reviews, musings, rants and such. Enjoy.
I thought I'd start off this blog by posting a review of Fuck Buttons' gig at Heaven, London this past Tuesday. Bit late I know, but better late than never.......
Fuck Buttons are a two-piece hailing from Bristol, comprised of Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power. They make ear-bending, bone-crunching music that melds noise, electronica and shoegaze into a chaotic, yet precise sound. They really, really need to be heard to be believed, and I took it upon myself to go watch them in all their live glory.
Calling Fuck Buttons a 'live' band is certainly stretching the definition of a live show, when they simply are two men surrounded by synthesizers, keyboards and various other devices. To say it is aesthetically pleasing would be lying, and a lot is left to the imagination, save for an average light show (to be honest, seeing Radiohead's light show renders anything else substandard).
However, I was well aware that this would be the case; anything extra would have been unwieldy and pointless to say the least.
The duo arrived on stage to little fanfare and plunged straight into 'Surf Solar', the opener from their amazing second album 'Tarot Sport'. Each mesmerizing layer throbbed and pulsed vibrantly without a drop in intensity at any point. And throughout the entire set, not once did the performance feel laborious or strained. It was quite the opposite, as the duo managed to gather the vast swathes of sound into a blissful, cohesive whole.
The apex of the set was 'Olympians', a deluge of swirling white noise calmly reined in by a hypnotic melody. The thundering sound system breathed new life into old favourites, particularly the storming encore of "Sweet Love for Planet Earth', which incidentally received the largest ovation of the night.
On the face of it, Fuck Buttons' music possesses a brutality that renders them impenetrable to the casual listener. Dig deeper and the clear their music is more a barrage of drone and noise.
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