I don’t think I’ve ever sought out a band that has taken me further from my comfort zone than Fuck Buttons have.
Yet, on Thursday night, there I was at the Showbox SoDo, watching Stereogum faves Fuck Buttons perform – and I’m glad that I did. The London experimental noise duo was kicking off their tour opening Mogwai; there were (at least) two TIG writers at this show, with my very smart friend Heather B covering Mogwai.
Over three decades ago, Kraftwerk set out to remove the barrier between man and machine (or at least blur the line as much as possible). Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, takes familiar sounds (recent pop hits) and meshes them together to form a cohesive sound. Although sounding nothing like those two artists, they were the ones that came to my mind immediately while witnessing Fuck Buttons. Fuck Buttons use a lot of familiar sounds and use them repetitively. Some of the drum (machine) beats sound like a hammer and you heard machinery, sounds from children’s toys and birds chirping throughout other songs.
For a little over 40 minutes, Fuck Buttons held the rapt attention of the audience (at least from what I saw near the front of the stage when I tried – unsuccessfully – to get a photo or two), who seemed mesmerized by the two men up front; that could be, though that it was too loud to have much of a conversation. They used laptops, synths, a drum machine (and a drum pad) and a vocoder with their microphone. When Benjamin John Power or Andrew Hung would sing, their vocals were drowned out by the sounds around them; rather than pay attention to the lyrics Fuck Buttons force you to respond to the sounds they are creating.
The final song was “Bright Tomorrow” and it sounded like an instrumental disco track with a constant and steady 4/4 beat. The drum machine beat sounded like someone hammering a nail at the exact same rate over and over again but twice in that song feedback almost drowned out everything else. That could have been a dance song interrupted by noise – and that very well could be the point. It reminded me of The Raveonettes’ single “Aly, Walk With Me”, which is more of a slow, straight-forward pop song but it is interrupted by a very long moment of noise and feedback.
Most of the songs played were from FB’s debut Street Horrrsing album but the duo also has a single scheduled for release on Tuesday called Colours Move and it is available both digitally and as a 12” record.
The band’s name gels with their sound. By default, any band with the “f-word” in its title is going to be inaccessible to listeners anyway because they are unavailable to traditional forms of media (you’re never going to see someone on MTV say “that last video was the new single from Fuck Buttons”). The sound is abrasive and noisy but still recognizable. It is not pleasant or easy to grasp on to but it is compelling nonetheless. I don’t know what mood I would be in to reach for Street Horrrsing off my CD rack but live Fuck Buttons killed. It was a challenging set and simultaneously beautiful and jarring.
They aren’t avant garde for the sake of being avant garde. Fuck Buttons got the attention of the room by being loud but they kept it throughout the 40 minute set by doing something interesting and different.