Music > Live Reviews

Fuck Buttons // The Waterfront -15th September 2013

23/09/13

Some bands win you over with youthful exuberance, others with physical effort. Some sit on their high horses and play hard to get, others practically grovel for your affection. Some use showmanship, others use musical virtuosity. Fuck Buttons do none of the above. Fuck Buttons are just two normal guys. Two normal guys who play their music so loud it justifies their eponymous expletive, that is. Writing with hindsight, I guess I’d now describe a Fuck Buttons gig as more of an experience than a show. Yes, there are fancy visuals projected onto the flanks of the stage, and timely use of strobe lighting and a massive disco ball, but that’s about as far as the ‘performance’ atmosphere goes. The rest of the stage is set by an ignominious pile of buttons, trigger pads, and tangles of cables strewn across a makeshift desk, to be headed at each end by Andy and Ben. Normal names, for two normal guys. The mid gig movement is pretty restrained too; there’s consistent head bobbing from the pair, but only a few fleeting ventures away from the safety of their kit, and even then it’s only by Andy, and only to facilitate his gut-wrenching screaming into a pitch shifting microphone. Ultimately, there’s not a great deal of effort from either of them, but maybe that made the sonic experience even more beguiling.

And sonically, Fuck Buttons are an absolute tour de force. The whole gig was such a wave of noise that it’s actually hard to fully express. The beauty of each and every Fuck Buttons track is the fold of layers that are built throughout the song’s duration. Each starts relatively simply – set opener Brainfreeze for example, has a plain drum pattern for the first few seconds – but each then expand exponentially with volume and complexity until they reach a screaming, static-laden beautiful explosion so relentless that it almost drags you into hypnosis. You see in some respects Fuck Buttons’ music is quite relaxing, despite the ever apparent volume. Moving very slowly as it does, the music is easy to get lost in, and I actually took to closing my eyes for what felt like swathes of time. In fact, it was oddly jarring to be awoken from this state, and to see the duo plain faced as ever, after I’d experienced such intense feeling. Fuck Buttons output amounts to far greater than the sum of their parts, and so as I have said, the visual aspect of the gig was somewhat redundant; it being far better to let your eyelids droop, and relax into the haze. As most of their songs push ten minutes, only being able to play 8 tracks curtailed Fuck Buttons’ set list a little, but when their music was so majestic, it was hard to be too critical. Slow Focus featured heavily, with the slightly clubbier The Red Wing going down best with the ‘casual’ audience, whilst debut Street Horrrsing was disappointingly only represented by the percussive riot of Colours Move. Both Surf Solar and the aptly named Olympians (the tracks from Tarot Sport that featured in the Olympic opening ceremony) brought the most tuneful heights of the gig, with the latter’s simple twinkling melody almost sounding like a lullaby amidst all the distortion. After polite thanks and a brief moment off-stage, they played out with Space Mountain, which as had become the norm, ended in a fittingly rousing cacophony. A slightly strange atmosphere, surpassed entirely by the most awe inspiring live sound I’ve ever experienced.

Alex Throssell