Fuck Buttons
Street Horrrsing

The noise that becomes sound and melody at the same time. The cult of distorted assonance, the beauty of the filtered, the possible complementarity of a deafening white/black dichotomy. The rediscovery of a triumph of colors in a desolate daguerreotype, modified by wear and treatments. A sense of permanent obsession: the obsession with beauty, and its achievement through complete noise catharsis. Yin and yang that blend together. THE feedback.

This is how "Street Horrrsing", the debut full-length of Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, the Bristol duo better known by the provocative pseudonym Fuck Buttons, presents itself. Fifty minutes of heavy harsh noise, deviant, unhealthy, yet at the same time gleaming, luminous, vital. Cursed and healing at once. Six songs, each closely linked to the other, each introduced by the other, in a superimposition that might recall a Russian matryoshka but which, more than the aesthetics of a porcelain doll, resembles a large industrial trap, tight and snapping, with sharp serrations, leaving no escape. When just a couple of synthesizers are enough to mold a grotesque and deceptive song format.

"Sweet Love For Planet Earth" is a nightmare.

A soft, gentle, harmless, naive sound of a music box advances ominously, alone and unarmed in a silent clearing. Slowly, a first shock arrives. Then a second, and a third, and hundreds of different electrolytic discharges that traverse it from head to tail, altering its structure, robotizing it. Drones that, like at high tide, flow and ebb to stain the electronic mass. Then, the total dehumanization: a cluster of filtered, modified, brutalized voices that burst in with chilling hisses to shatter the balance created between the ecstasy of harmony and the alienation of distortion. A Kruegerian malice that, nonetheless, hides a deep spirituality. Afterward, nothing will ever be the same again.

"Ribs Out" is waking up in the middle of the night, anguished, only to discover that you have ended up in an even worse torment.

Everything that could be considered earthly disappears: dozens of different percussions are sampled and vortexed in a no man's land, free to unleash, deaf and dissonant. Free to open new lethal wounds on the listener's skin and copiously sprinkle salt on those already open. Distant, exaggerated, horrifying screams appear, growing ever more intense until merging into a heavy estranging screech.

The opportunity to start over is given by "Okay, Let's Talk About Magic".

Noise and machination continue to dominate, but this time they are industrial clangors, synesthetic, iridescent. You can close your eyes and see dazzling neon fountains that, when torn open, spew out color and perversion. That loop that keeps spinning, crushed and hit multiple times by the vocal overdubs in the background, begins to slowly change, carrying an almost unbearable weight until it becomes a monotone buzz, increasingly vivid in tint, fully saturating the faint rhythmic dislocation just perceptible. If this is talking about magic, give me an ash wand, I want to join in.

If Tetsuo, the futuristic cyborg born from the mind of Shinya Tsukamoto, could speak, he would do so through "Race You To My Bedroom/ Spirit Rise".

Vaporous puffs, electronic jets, simmering synthetic backwashes that march, liturgically, to convert the nearby precincts. It is a timid little organ, arisen almost by chance amid the din, that dictates the mood of the track. Drone upon drone upon drone, and imperceptible changes of course. Perpetual eclipse of the rotating motion. One-two-three, test, one-two-three, test. It feels like witnessing a science fiction radio commentary, an intergalactic clash, with the Fuck Buttons as commentators.

Small beats appear in the hallucinatory micro-deep manifestation à la Axel Willner (alias The Field) of "Bright Tomorrow". The result, sunny and dazzling as in the best traditions, is suddenly and completely upset by a deadly techno-industrial pounding, ferrous and clattering, soon joined by the usual filtered and distorted voices. The painting begins to blur, to take on indistinct contours, to drip to the ground. To melt. To shatter.

The final twist of "Colours Move", a somewhat opaque common denominator of what has already been said and played so far, with tribal references to the brutal violence of "Ribs Out" in a noise sauce, does not heavily influence the verdict on what is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful and interesting albums of 2008 and, for the future, a very solid cornerstone from which to restart for future works. Hung and Power: the buttons to fuck. They really know what they're doing, you know?

If you've lost your tortures and are looking for them, try rummaging inside here. You will be satisfied.