To begin, a self-fulfilling observation: the music of Fuck Buttons is specifically designed to create a rift in the fabric of the universe, through which dozens of music journalists have vanished completely into their own black holes.
(Spoiler: it’s unlikely that this review is going to buck the trend.)
Melbourne Festival’s purpose-built Hub space – a giant box ingeniously made from burnt toast and untreated Ikea timber – is destined to get an intense structural workout tonight.
Music program highlights Fuck Buttons, also guests of the difficulty-plagued ATP: Release The Bats, are here from Bristol to make ears bleed and introduce live audiences to tracks from their formidable new album Slow Focus. Simultaneously.
Now occupying an unusual cultural space thanks to their music’s inclusion in the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, Fuck Buttons have transformed from the avant-garde electro-drone terrorists of Street Horrrsing into something more akin to the bastard offspring of The Chemical Brothers and Mogwai.
They might not strictly be out to make people dance like the former, but there’s a shared obsession with electronic psychedelia, meticulous production, and a sense of the epic.
With the latter, the common ground is the sprawling nature of the music they make, more often than not anchored in melody, however glacial it might be.
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It’s a formula that’s attracted them a growing army of equal parts wild-eyed and chin-stroking fans, many of whom are gathered here for the sold-out show.
An hour after the doors open, Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power amble out on stage to cheers and position themselves facing one another on opposite sides of a low mirror ball, warming up their consoles as though piloting a disco Tardis.
The pummeling, near tribal rhythms of Slow Focus opener “Brainfreeze” begin proceedings. Heavy, buzzing synths build in volume until the nodding breakbeat kicks in, rattling timber walls and rib cages in equal measure.
Hung provides vocal effects, but they’re mostly lost in the barrage of sound. The “Loud Noise” warning at the door tonight already feels like an understatement.
Tarot Sport’s “Surf Solar” is next, its four-four rhythm as close as Fuck Buttons get to heads-down techno. When its screaming, distorted lead synth line appears about halfway through the track, it’s like a pulse of electricity jolting across the crowd. Therein, perhaps, is the duo’s real strength – their ability to create immersive, trance-like spaces and then abruptly push listeners several levels higher.
Power briefly mans a floor tom for the next track, as though the thunderous percussion needs any more support. Both he and Hung are edge-frayed, electric silhouettes on the projection screen behind the mirror ball, portrayed as ghostly inhuman gateways for the extraordinary sounds currently filling the room.
By the time the chiming, Chariots Of Fire-esque synth notes of “Olympians” washes over the crowd, the volume is such that we might as well be listening to the voice of Zeus. Surely this isn’t meant for mortal ears.
A brutal, mechanised rendition of “Sentients” follows, Hung and Power dialing up the abrasiveness to remind people where they came from. The almost physical level of sound is enough to blast away most rational thoughts, leaving behind random phrases like “jet engines” and “colliding spaceships”.
Another highlight comes via the majestic tones of “The Red Wing”, a slowly pulsing track previewed in their Harvest set last year. It’s the most expansive number of the night, a hypnotic, sprawling skyscape to get completely lost in. The audience should be hovering about five centimetres above the ground by now.
The hip-hop rhythms and rolling, surging synths of “Hidden Xs” end the main set, its titanic closing movements generating enough white noise to terrify Kevin Shields. Despite what the recent film Gravity suggests, oblivion isn’t silent – it’s loud.
“We’re Fuck Buttons, thanks for watching”, says Hung with a smile as the duo leave the stage. Or at least, that’s what it looks like he says. We can only see his lips moving at this point.
The fierce clamour for an encore cuts through the tinnitus we’ve collectively acquired as a souvenir, Hung and Power soon returning for a suitably epic and uplifting version of “Space Mountain”.
Battered by sound, minds expanded, and in no doubt that Fuck Buttons are creating something genuinely unique, the audience leaves the wooden box dazed but elated.
The confused onlookers on Princes Bridge must have thought a rocket was being launched on the banks of the Yarra. An entirely understandable mistake, because if any musical act can create a sense of disorienting drama, it’s Fuck Buttons.
