Fuck Buttons – Slow Focus

July 22, 2013 • ATP Recordings

Fuck Buttons was a real cool band back in 2008, for sure. One of the first "good" live shows I saw, and Street Horrrsing was a noise/electronica classic in my book. I've kept up with the band only casually since then, but it's good to know that they're still putting out some quality stuff. Slow Focus is definitively their least-good so far, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth listening to.

Not much has changed for the duo since 2009 and here we have basically the same sound that we had on Tarot Sport, coupling together driving tribal rhythms and percussion with warm and atmospheric sawtooth synth layers (with some cool sound effects too, in a way that Black Dice might do if Black Dice were still good). It's a bit less intense and aggressive; the tracks don't really have the same wall-of-sound thing going on, but the dynamics we get instead are mostly well-done and work great on keeping the tracks interesting and moving forward. And every now and again it does include those brain-pounding moments, like "Stalker"'s heavy ending minutes.

It has a few minor issues that are holding it back, though. A couple of the some of the melodies and "hooks" are a bit silly, like "The Red Wing", which make it hard to take the album seriously and take away from its overall quality. There are still no vocals, disappointingly; the harsh distorted screaming was one of the more interesting elements of their older material and it looks like it's gone for good.

And like all Fuck Buttons, Slow Focus relies a lot on repetition; I can see this being a downside for some people and yeah, maybe the album isn't extremely interesting the whole way through, but there is enough attention to detail and little bits here and there that stick out and make the experience as a whole worth it. I can definitely understand people getting bored with it, though, and it doesn't have a ton of replay value. On the other hand, the song structures are definitely more well-crafted and less chaotic than they used to be, so that's a plus.

It's definitely an enjoyable album. Not the classic that Street Horrrsing was for me, but it has its merits and it will definitely have its fans. I'm honestly a bit surprised that in the last few years I don't seem to have been hearing many other artists making stuff like this... but for now I'm satisfied with what we have so far.

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