SWG3, Glasgow
Hairs tingle and fillings buzz as Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power set their cosmic electronica to maximum heavy
Hairs tingle and fillings buzz as Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power set their cosmic electronica to maximum heavy
Their name may invite the use of asterisks, but Fuck Buttons sound more like an obelisk: towering, dark and heavy. Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power's music was used repeatedly at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, where their fecund electronica helped create and sustain an atmosphere of off-kilter euphoria. They achieved their own podium finish when Slow Focus, their third album, cracked the top 40 this summer.
At this sold-out gig, Hung and Power face each other over a snakepit of cables, effects pedals and black boxes. It looks like the Robot Wars pit lane on a ping pong table, and the bodge-tech vibe is reinforced by a sequencer mounted in roll-on luggage and a stage set-up that includes two motion-sensing Xbox 360 Kinect cameras, hacked to project real-time silhouettes of the duo as they jab and twiddle their gear.
They open with Brainfreeze, a deafening, languorous march that stacks ominous pitch-bent synths over a clattering tom-tom drum loop, augmented by high-pitched, animalistic yelps that Hung performs live. Like all Fuck Buttons songs, it sounds as if it could go on forever, but the repetition is hypnotic rather than numbing, with subtle variations and manipulations in each loop that border on the subliminal.
If the plan is to alter consciousness, there are also physical effects. The celestial drone of Olympians sets hairs tingling and fillings buzzing, the result of precisely wrangled oscillations combined with bracing volume. The anvil clang that underpins Sentients is similarly invasive, thumping away like an alien heartbeat.
It is a gruelling but galvanising experience, and it helps that Hung and Power are the opposite of laptop frowners, sharing an obvious and infectious enjoyment at recreating their cosmic vistas and body-blow beats. They encore with the chiming utopian techno of Space Mountain, named for Disneyland's thrilling rollercoaster in the dark, and it seems an apt comparison.
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