 Media Credit: Matthew Walford
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On the Fuck Buttons debut album,
Street Horrrsing, British noisemakers Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power clearly have no interest in radio airplay or mainstream accessibility. This is experimental music in the truest sense of the word. In classic drone style, the music largely consists of simple, repetitive drum beats, fuzzy guitar riffs and keyboard sounds looped almost endlessly. The album is mostly instrumental, and when vocals do appear, they are distorted, abrasive and virtually indistinguishable. That's not to say that this is a bad album by any stretch. It just requires a certain degree of patience and open-mindedness to fully appreciate. In true experimental/drone fashion, the album's six tracks bleed together to ultimately create one 50-minute pastiche of sonic chaos. Yet there is an underlying sense of melody to the Fuck Buttons' music that is often missing from some of the more heavy metal-leaning drone bands like Sunn O))). The keyboards on the album's opening track, "Sweet Love for Planet Earth," create an ethereal mood while "Bright Tomorrow" kicks off with an almost techno-like vibe. Ultimately however, Street Horrrsing suffers from the same problem that plagues most drone music: it always sounds like it's building up to a payoff that never actually occurs. Then again, that problem might have more to do with listeners' expectations than the music itself.
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