Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport (album review)
Early last year, the UK duo Fuck Buttons burst onto the scene with their debut Street Horrrsing, a delightful mix of noise and dance music that ultimately didn’t quite seem like it knew which direction it wanted to go. Many months and gigs later, they’re back with their follow-up, and it shows a serious progression to their sound. Produced by Andrew Weatherall, Tarot Sport finds the group streamlining into even more of a straight-up dance group. Sure, they’re still noisy, and there are a couple spots where they don’t adhere strictly to the church of 4/4, but for the most part this is some dense, heady music that you could probably churn up a club with.
With 7 songs running almost an hour in length, it’s not like the group has gotten more concise this time out. That said, there were a lot of moments on Street Horrrsing, that seemed like they found themselves stuck in a loop and content to grind it out, whereas Tarot Sport always feels like it’s pushing forward and morphing into something else.
The album kicks off with “Surf Solar,” and over the course of almost 11 minutes the group moves from sparkling ambience into a gorgeous thumping middle section with micro-sampled vocals that sounds something like The Field with more of an edge. It’s not enough to stay there, though, and by the end of the cut the group has reached feverish levels, as layer upon layer of distorted synths and crunchy bass push it into almost a shoegazer territory.
“Surf Solar” (edit) – Fuck Buttons
The two tracks I mentioned above where the group breaks free a bit are “Rough Steez” and “Phantom Limb.” They’re the shortest cuts on the album, and also the noisiest and most off-kilter in terms of rhythm, feeling more like setups of larger things to come. Because of that, they actually work into the release well, giving a bit of downtime from the otherwise fairly furious tempo.
Of the remaining tracks, it’s hard for me to pick a favorite, and while all of them progress with somewhat similar sounds (thumping kick beats, squealing layers of distortion, sparking synths, and super low bass), the album closer of “Flight Of The Feathered Serpent” just about takes the cake. Blasting out of the gate with a sheet of noise, it layers in some rumbling percussion and that slow-stepping bass while piling on the haze. About halfway through, everything drops away but the drums, and just as you think it’s going to wind down it lurches into an even more noisy finish.
“Flight Of The Feathered Serpent” – Fuck Buttons
In my review of their debut album, I noted that I felt the group had something even better in them based on different things that I heard (okay, so it was mostly based on the fury of “Bright Tomorrow”). Fortunately, they seem to have isolated those strengths and ran with them on this album, making for an excellent follow-up.
December 20th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
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