Slow Focus, the title of Fuck Buttons’ third and most recent album, is an apt descriptor of the state a listener has to be in to fully enjoy their music. It requires patience. You have to let it wash over you in waves, slowly build up and then fade away. In a live setting, it’s easiest to enjoy Fuck Buttons if you isolate yourself from the rest of the audience and adopt a meditative state of mind. The audience at Fuck Buttons’ recent show at the Sinclair head-bobbed and danced slowly, each person absorbed in his own world. At least one guy had his eyes closed for almost the entirety of the set. The songs transitioned smoothly into one another, with intros and outros blending to create one long drone suite. Slow focus.
A two-man British outfit composed of Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, Fuck Buttons formed in 2004 as a futuristic electronica project that cited Mogwai and Aphex Twin as influences. After putting out two albums in two years, the duo took almost four years to release Slow Focus. Despite the fact that their music resides far to the left of the pop music spectrum, two of Fuck Buttons’ songs were used in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, alongside British heroes like The Rolling Stones, The Clash and David Bowie.
A year after this mainstream exposure, Fuck Buttons are headlining a three-continent tour. Their set at the Sinclair included songs from all three of their albums, but was weighted towards recent material. The first track of the night (and the first on their new album), “Brainfreeze,” brought the revelation that the sharp high-pitched tones which occur in the song are actually Hung’s voice, so distorted as to be totally unrecognizable. Power had vocal duties on “Colours Move,” the only song from debut album ‘Street Horrrsing’ that the duo played. His intermittent shrieks and garbled speech, which form a motif throughout that album, sound like a transmission picked up from a horror movie newscast. It’s unnerving, but Hung and Power have found a way to use their voices as electronic instruments. “The Red Wing,” one of the most memorable tracks off of Slow Focus, received the most audience appreciation. After an hour, the set closed with the crescendo of “Hidden Xs,” the final track off Slow Focus.
Hung and Power were clearly immersed in their own music, with Hung pausing his slow hip-wobbling only to take quick pulls from a beer. The two stood across from one another, each man adding his own sounds to the mix. Their absorption in their music matched the similarly intent vibe in the audience. In fact, neither man said a word to the crowd until the final “Thank you.” This wasn’t for rudeness or lack of interest—Hung manned the merchandise table before and after the show, where he chatted with fans—but because interacting with the audience would have broken the spell.