Fuck Buttons Are Exploring the Boundaries of Sound the Old-Fashioned Way

The way Fuck Buttons see it, they're in the business of exploration. If all goes right, we're coming along for the journey. Together, we'll push the limits of sound and music and the imagination, get taken to new mental landscapes, explore varying ranges of emotion. For a sense of the possibilities, consider the role of the duo's music in scoring part of the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games or the sublime swell and release of their 2013 album Slow Focus. I'm certainly a booster of this idea of the group's music, which is why I'm sitting with members Ben Power and Andy Hung in a drab classroom in a Polish cultural center in north Brooklyn talking to them about guitars, or, rather, not-guitars.

“I’ve never really played an instrument,” Andy says. “Ben used to play guitar but he’s like 'we’re Fuck Buttons,' and that’s the end of his guitar playing.” Ben clarifies that guitar did make some appearances in the band's early work, but never as a normal instrument with chords and strumming. It was “more scrape and bash and stuff,” he explains.

“You can explore the limits of your craft and skill with an instrument, and that is what a lot of musicians do, but it’s not what we’re interested in,” Ben says. “We’re more interested in the sonic capabilities of a certain—anything. That's the thing, it could be anything.” Fuck Buttons have used objects like radiators as instruments, and, in early shows, Ben would scrape contact mics across a washing machine drum. The conceptual approach is not exactly extreme mountaineering, but it is headed somewhere different.

Fuck Buttons make what might technically be considered electronic music. Audiences tend to respond to the live show like they're at a rave. The duo are fans of the festival circuit (although they've also played venues generally oriented toward classical music, inspiring people to dance in the aisles). Fuck Buttons have good—even great—albums, but these can come across with a sort of gnashing incoherence if they're not approached with a receptive mindset. The pathway to understanding Fuck Buttons is above all live, where noise is a priority. Certain things about Fuck Buttons begin to become clear onstage, in the same way that certain tones in their music begin to crystallize into tiny revelations and previously hidden highlights as they linger and are hammered home at high volume.

Something that's not entirely apparent until you're in a crowd listening over massive speakers, is that Fuck Buttons is music that almost exists to overwhelm you into movement. I first saw the duo in 2009, and I couldn't imagine that something so loud and discordant—I remember being struck by the fact that they were playing a GameBoy as an instrument—could also resolve itself into dancing. I left sweaty and impressed, and I still feel retroactively sweet every time I wear the T-shirt I bought. Slow Focus, the group's most recent album, is more openly dance ready, with thunderous beats that nod toward hip-hop and industrial music. At Warsaw, the Brooklyn venue where the band recently performed as part of Northside Festival, the chaos was more controlled, the presentation tasteful in a way that let the experience speak for itself.

This is not to say that people weren't losing their shit. A couple rows in front of me, a guy with his arms outstretched was grasping at the air above him like he was about to shoot lightning out of his fingers or he was holding a magical orb. To be fair, if there were a place where a magical orb might decide to cut through the fabric between parallel universes, a Fuck Buttons show would be a good one. At the front, people fist pumped and jumped up and down. Farther back, on the fringes, people did weird twitchy dances that looked almost involuntary.

The current Fuck Buttons tour is unique in that it features a kaleidoscopic visual element, designed by Ben, and the video backdrop creates a sort of digital chiaroscuro that highlights the human/electronic balance onstage. This contrast is another element of the group's music that's so compelling: While we tend to think of electronic music as particularly inhuman and we tend to think of music without lyrics as somewhat impersonal, Fuck Buttons make electronic, precise, atmospheric music that nonetheless leaves room for messiness.

Not only is their whole deal somewhat improvisational—they started making music in jam sessions together, and they continue to write this way—it's built on the premise of being open to failure. Andy describes his disdain for computers in pretty practical terms: “There are so many components of a computer that could go wrong that you have no idea of—software as well as hardware.” With the setup Fuck Buttons have onstage, it's easy for them to adapt if something does go wrong. “The mistakes actually make it fun because the permutations of our gear are limitless,” Andy adds.

“You have to think on your feet a bit, don't you?” Ben says. At one point during the Warsaw show, something clearly was going wrong, and the duo flagged down a tech guy, but the music continued uninterrupted.

Andy and Ben are pretty unassuming guys, and one of the things I enjoyed most about watching them was the way that Andy would casually step away from his instruments for a drink of water, going so far as to sit down onstage and watch his fellow performer. So many things about Fuck Buttons seem so obvious and intuitive. The music doesn't need context or a personal backstory—it's simply enough to know that humans are making it, that it is human. I've been struck, listening to Slow Focus recently, by the way in which this approach resembles a classical tradition rather than a contemporary pop one.

Fittingly, Andy and Ben don't dwell too much on their own stories when asked (in brief: visual art students start jamming, couches are crashed upon at one point, band becomes a successful, full-time pursuit), nor on the ways in which the music, which is at by far its best and most accessible on Slow Focus, might have evolved in ways that reflect personal changes. Songs aren't built around concepts, but rather track titles and associations come about as the songs begin to come into focus.

“You can kind of almost feel it creeping up, like maybe when a song is half finished,” Ben says. “And then I guess … it’s something that surprises you.”

Any more kind of context would be boring, anyway. This music is about getting away from the personal, about losing yourself in that instant of dance when it makes 100 percent sense to grasp at whatever magical orbs you might encounter. As Fuck Buttons point out, making and listening to this kind of music is a form of escapism.

“I’m sure every explorer, regardless of what field they’re in, do it for escapism because it's an area that they haven’t been in before,” Andy says. I falter, considering where this music has or might take me (if pressed, I'd probably have a really cheesy, pseudo-metaphysical answer like “the realm of dance” or “a state of instinct”), but Andy has a simpler destination in mind: “Somewhere else.”

Fuck Buttons continue their tour tonight in Toronto. Check out all the remaining tour dates and stream a tour mix featuring Coil, Chopin, and Prince from Ben and Andy below:

Tracklist:

Syrinx - December Angel
Coil - Paradisiac
Daphne Oram - Episode Metallic
Total Life - Radiator II
Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Black Magic Originated In Nature
Chopin - Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2
The Caretaker - Moments Of Sufficient Lucidity
Ceephax - Forest Zone 303
Legowelt - How I Live
Prince - I would Die 4 U
Dune OST/ Toto - Paul Meets Chani
Oneohtrix Point Never - I Only Have Eyes For You
Shreikback - the Big Hush
Roedelius - Alle Jahre Wieder
Scott Walker - Rhymes of Goodbye

Remaining Tour Dates:
6/19/14 @ Adelaide Hall (NXNE Festival) – Toronto, ON
6/26/14 @ El Rey – Los Angeles, CA
6/27/14 @ Independent – San Francisco, CA
7/1/14 @ The Crocodile – Seattle, WA
7/2/14 @ Star Theatre – Portland, OR
7/3/14 @ Fortune Sound Club – Vancouver, BC

Kyle Kramer is always on an adventure. He's on Twitter - @KyleKramer

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