A friend recently informed me that the dark ambient rubric has now become known as “Illbient”. Fuck Buttons are bona-fide positivists, in both attitude and sound so it occurs to me that they/their sound could be described as “wellbient”. That’s not to say that darker, more intense moments do not exist in Fuck Buttons music, but they tend to lay down repetitive hooks, al la Can or PIL, often with Burundi rhythms, then reel you in until that hook is driven Hemingway style into your heart, and before you know it you’re a fish getting rhythmically clubbed on a pier. And strangely enjoying every minute of it. They’re minimal, but not in the classic Suicide/ Cabaret Voltaire sense of the phrase. More Digital/Low-fi crossover.
They have an ability to come on with Orb-like ambience, only to segue into a soundtrack for a low-fi Jean Michelle Jarre getting raped in a club toilet by Coil.
I come to the Fuck Buttons myspace site and notice mine is the 233rd play of “Sweet love for planet Earth” of the day. To me anyway, this bodes well for an electronic/experimental/industrial-influenced outfit in terms of the “I believe in coincidence but I just don’t trust it” perspective.
Normally, this kind of positivism would make me want to pull my teeth out with pliers, their seeds of love falling on the stony ground that is my dry, blackened soul. But despite the fact that these boys are to my battered old psyche possibly too young to have experienced any real distress in their lives, there is a genuinely uplifting aspect to them both as people and their music.
The gig obviously went down well, (marred only by a single missed cue by Andrew Hung, but hey- I’m not bitching) the punters lapping it up in the restrained manner audiences have these days. However, as Mikeyboy (BCR Photog geezer) pointed out, if this was a squat gig, people would be going apeshit…
BCR: I’ve noticed a lot of talk about a “minimalist” movement or genre in electronic music at the moment.
Benjamin John Power: Yeah.
BCR: There’s minimalist aspects to your work. Do you consider yourselves influenced by or part of this?
Benjamin John Power: I haven’t really noticed it as a genre as such, but we’re definitely interested in minimalism if it’s refined. I mean some of our influences - I don’t really want to cite them... I mean yeah, if it’s a refined minimal sound, then yeah, it kind of interests us.
BCR: Some of your instrumentation is very low-fi, and without wanting to get bogged down in categorisation, do you consider this a form of minimalism?
Andrew Hung: We don’t consider any instrumentation as being or defining our sound at all.
BCR: In terms of the noise/experimental music that exists today, your approach, judging by your song titles is peculiarly positive sounding - may I say that I approve of this reaction against what I call “The pornography of despair” - it’s a definite break from what is the darker norm in leftfield or experimental music. Is there any aspect of irony present here?
Andrew Hung: No, this is a genuine positivism. We haven’t made a conscious decision to go towards… ahh, well we did start out as quite a nihilistic noise outfit but it hasn’t been a conscious decision to go towards a more embracing sound. That came naturally, and quickly.
Benjamin John Power: Yeah, it came really quickly. We tired of the kind of abrasive side of noise music.
Andrew Hung: We still use the abrasion but not in terms of pushing away, it’s more embracing.
BCR: Likewise a lot of noise music is about decay, whereas you’ve said you’re about “flourishing”, by this do you mean a flourishing of your artistic élan or is this another aspect of your positivity, and also where does this positivity come from? What exactly did you mean?
Andrew Hung: I think it’s a basic, natural human instinct to hope for things, I mean it’s the thing that makes people live as opposed to die or just exist.
BCR: I’ve heard you speak of “channelling Earth energy”. We’re at the junction of a lot of London’s ley lines here. Also the civil defence tunnels that run between the Cabinet war rooms and Buckingham palace pass under here. Were you aware of that? Do you consider the psycho-geographical relevance of a venues location when you play?
Benjamin John Power: Yeah, you definitely get a sense of history from places but I don’t consciously research it.
BCR: The references to “channelling” and “the Universe” imply a spirituality, also the reference to ghosts and magic. What are your personal takes on magic?
Benjamin John Power: That’s a tough one actually.
BCR: Obviously there’s a creative and sympathetic magic going on between you, but what is your personal understanding of this?
