The Echo – Echo Park, CA
Live Review: 11/12/09
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I’m standing in the middle of a packed crowd at LA’s Echo. Electronic music is blasting from the stage, but no one appears to be dancing. At first glance, this could seem like a problem, a doomed prognosis for the careers of the two energetic, intensely riveted young men on stage. But then again, this isn’t just any electronic music.

A closer look reveals that the audience is in fact dancing, though the movements are subtler than you might expect given the deafening, fast washes of sound coming from the speakers. More importantly, however, most people are facing the stage with their eyes closed, grinning widely as if warming themselves in the sun after a long winter.

And that is precisely the feeling a Fuck Buttons show evokes. This is because the pair (Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power from Bristol, England, who formed the band in 2004) has managed to take the very aspect of electronic music that the majority of naysayers find the most loathsome-its repetitive nature-and, as if by embracing the primal reverberation of a heartbeat, elevate it to an almost transcendental level. This is music that you want to be inside of, that surrounds you; this is repetition at its best. But that’s not all. The Fuck Buttons have a way of combining hopeful, emotive melodies with pulsing beats and hard-edged distortion, so that the songs seem to speak to both the difficulty and the beauty in life all at once. Not to mention the long, slow builds that coax out layer after layer of nuance and delicate detail throughout a live show (or album listen), leaving you transfixed and nourished, cradled in the music. The Fuck Buttons are known for their noise rock tendencies (and believe me, they’re loud), so it may be surprising then that their music stirs up feelings of a lighter nature-ones of triumph, optimistic anticipation and joy.

Photo courtesy of Kindelanryan, licensed under Creative Commons.

Immersed in the sound, I’m finally able to put my finger on what I like about electronic music in general, because the Fuck Buttons are doing it so well. While other genres-or even other artists within the electronic genre-rely on a more linear style (shorter songs with a clear beginning-to-end structure, lyrics, etc), the Fuck Buttons instead offer a pool of sound for the listener to dive into. I recommend that you do. Once inside you will see that the songs do not tell you how to feel but ask you instead to find that out for yourself, to experience a kind of manic meditation. Repetition can be boring, sure. But much like the pattern on a butterfly’s wing or the ocean’s crashing tides, it is also natural, essential, primitive and therefore, beautiful.

I did not expect such thought-provoking fodder from a band called the “Fuck Buttons,” but stranger things have happened, I suppose. Tarot Sport is the group’s second album, just released in Oct. 2009. If you get a chance, see the Fuck Buttons live. If you can’t, I recommend listening to Tarot Sport really loud whenever you’re wondering if your life is headed in the direction it’s supposed to. Trust me, you’ll find out that it is.

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First photo courtesy of Chilichow, licensed under Creative Commons.