For the handful of people present at 9pm, the Fuck Buttons show began with an unceremonious start when the man who is Total Life strolled onto the stage and over to a table covered in gadgetry and crisscrossing cables. He hunched over it, pressed a button and instantly the gaping theater hummed with an overwhelming drone that in other contexts might sound like the result of a cable unplugged somewhere. For the next thirty minutes, standing under a single light in eerie, foggy silhouette, he twisted and warped the drone in trudging Doppler shifts of competing layers of sound. The only trace of melody or rhythm appeared in incidental alignments of waxing and waning frequencies, the most dominant being a periodic swelling and receding on the low end, which at its peak had a denim-quaking ferocity that shook the air. More meditation than a journey from A to B, Total life performed the aural equivalent of a complex wine, rich enough that even the most inexperienced taster feels compelled to play sommelier, picking out the sweet notes but ultimately getting consumed by sensory overload.
Fuck Buttons’ set began with the aggressive tribal intro of “Brainfreeze,” which also opens their latest studio album. Although the duo’s compositions are mostly built on the order of beats and rhythmic elements, as well as a heavy emphasis on arpeggios, their sound, like Total Life’s, also featured elements of chance as well. Periodic oscillations and delay times created phantom melodies and rhythms as things fell into and out of sync, creating complex moiré patterns by superimposing simpler ones. The logical sense to the transition from opener to headliner rarely works so well.
A stunning video backdrop kept things interesting throughout the set, as well as offstage strobes that would take over at key moments. As Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power stood at their stations, a camera on either of them fed their silhouettes to the backdrop, which which then interplayed with prerecorded visual imagery–faces, fire, static, rising sparks. It was a dazzling compliment to music that is already hypnotic and so full of ear candy that after awhile starts to feel spiritual. The third song, “Olympians,” hit a tender transition that post rock diehards could appreciate. After continuously serving up the more beat-heavy numbers in their repertoire, they encored with the relatively tame “Sweet Love for Planet Earth.”
With all the subtlety and nuance present in Fuck Buttons’ arsenal of old and new technology, at times it seemed like the sound system was so overloaded that it worked against them, trading dynamic for a monolithic, liquid wall of reverberation sloshing around the room and consuming the finer details of their patches and tweaks. Simply pressing a finger to the ear to block out the bulk noise revealed the wealth of sonic squiggles and latticework that make their albums such an interesting listen. The attendees wearing earplugs wore them with good reason, since it would be a shame to miss out on any frequency even though there are so many to indulge in.
Set List:
Brain Freeze
Colours Move
Olympians
Sentients
The Red Wing
Surf Solar
Hidden Xs
Encore:
Sweet Love For Planet Earth
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