Review: Fuck Buttons @ Heaven

Visionaries Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, the ATP-signed duo known as Fuck Buttons, make an imposing image at one end of the low tunnel under the arches at Charing Cross. Laptops, mixers and a single drum between them, they start with Surf Solar, the first track from their second album, out this month, and what an intro - a few dancey notches away from the buzzing drone of their first album. Under the scorching lights of Heaven, bracing genres are gradually evoked - noise, minimal techno, Animal Collective style experimentalism, drone and electronica.

It's satisfying that the sound of distorted screaming into a mic that features at the end of tracks like 'Sweet Love For Planet Earth' are just that - Benjamin Power screaming into a distorted mic. Simple and blissful.

Even the more 'difficult' moments - where it feels like you've heard nothing but reverberating sound at the same pitch for minutes and minutes - are brilliantly put together and well executed. Coherent and arduous, twinkling nodules of keyboard sound are ripped out with the Fuck Buttons trademark crescendo - a cacophonous wall of sound, a splurging surge of noise which is then in turn caressed by the softer sound. Rise, peak, and fall. A cathartic experience if ever there was one.

Zane Lowe looked like the he enjoyed himself as we exit, with little hearing left despite a 50 metre berth from the speakers. Sometimes brutal, often beautiful, and utterly mesmerising.

Image from Fearless Tall Dude Killer's photostream under the Creative Commons Licence