{grate 2.5} Afeedback drone rolls on for minutes before shifting in any
discernable way, and occasional percussive beatdowns keep breaking. Out here,
the territory is ominous, because something is bound to change and it can’t be
predicted.
experimental noise duo Fuck Buttons take a designer’s aesthetic with conceptual
crescendos on their debut Street Horrrsing, blending off-putting noise tones
(harsh static and screams) with palatable and friendly genre references from
dance music to post-rock like Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Each of the album’s six tracks follows a similar framework,
starting with a minimal amount of brute distortion, some shoegazey keyboard
chords, and a sample flourish here and there in the distance. Fatigue sets in
after two minutes of the grating repetition, but just when you’re about to
change tracks or grab a sandwich, the group attacks. Red-lining vocal sermons
fall into the mix, and suddenly the songs take on more cathartic connotations.
The album’s intentionally drawn-out nature may initially seem unnecessary, but
the band’s merit rests solely on this specific song trajectory.
Take blog-hyped track “Bright Tomorrow” for example: a
simple kick drum and trance synth repeats as tranquil 8-bit keys invite
themselves to the party. Everything feels locked in, but then someone gets
antsy and blows out the PA speaker, resulting in fuzzy overload. The keyboard
pads keep adding up until the group finally takes the mic and contributes its
own gibberish to the piece. It all fades out with only the white noise left
standing.
That’s Fuck Buttons in a nutshell; “Bright Tomorrow” is
easily the record’s strongest track, and every other song is just a variation
on the same compositional theme. Street Horrrsing proves the two-piece has
tasteful and complex sonic aspirations, but might be a little scared and
overtly dependent on Black Dice’s backlog to create its own weird niche just
yet.
