Album Review: Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus

Fuck Buttons
Slow Focus
Rating: Woof Daddy

Through two albums, Bristol noise merchants Fuck Buttons (Benjamin Power and Andrew Hung) have tinkered and tweaked their sound from the claustrophobic interiorness of Street Horrrsing to the skyscraping technicolor of Tarot Sport, and have even found some popular success when part of their track "Surf Solar" found its way into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. If you were thinking that nod would have changed their focus, you would be sadly mistaken. Slow Focus neither reinvents the wheel nor sounds like a retread of their past records, though it is unmistakably a Fuck Buttons record. Slow Focus finds the duo amping up their sound to Herculean levels, showing a muscularity that was always in the background but never at the forefront. This is not a record to put on for leisurely listening, it demands attention and does not give you any respite from the onslaught like former tracks such as "The Lisbon Maru" or "Bright Tomorrow." This is 7 of the most in your face electronic music you will hear all year, and is mind-bogglingly brilliant.

Opener "Brainfreeze" adds primal, real drums that provide a cavernous beat for the upswing of droning electronics,



a flurry of competing electronic noises rises and falls against each other in "Year of the Dog" creating an almost hallucinatory tableau as if painted by Hieronymus Bosch, until the funky swirl of off-kilter keyboards rubs up with a loopy beat and angry bass noises of "The Red Wing."



Throughout Slow Focus there is a constant push and pull between the harsh and beautiful. The dense scrape of "Sentients" pits angry electronics and clattering percussion into a frenzy of noise pollution as heavily treated vocals are morphed into just another element of the track, which then segues into the lush and deep sonics of "Prince's Prize" as blooping keyboards are ultimately overtaken by gorgeous washes of synths and a lumbering beat.



Fuck Buttons show their complete mastery of their sound on the final two tracks of Slow Focus which almost make up a huge chunk of the running time of the record. "Stalker" is a slow burn of rising synths and dense beats,



while closer "Hidden XS" is a brilliant, haunting and inescapably moving journey that takes you on a course through almost every emotion. There are times in the track where the music threatens to overwhelm you, but the duo finds some way to always keep you in line, bringing you back from the depths of despair to joy and hope.



Slow Focus is one of the best experimental electronic records you will hear all year. Power and Hung know how to bolster there sound without straying too far from what made them special in the first place. I've loved watching their progression and their steadfast belief that you can still make amazing music without compromising your sound. The end of the year is going to be extremely difficult trying to pick and album of the year when all these brilliant bands keep one-upping each other. Slow Focus is definitely in the running for album of the year.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.