All Tomorrows Parties Recordings’ Fuck Buttons have been entertaining noise lovers over the last couple of years with their sporadic dance drone feedback on debut ’Street Horrrising’ as well as their worldwide live performances and at many of the recent ATP festivals. The Bristolians return with more noise, more shoegaze and a lot more Techno-like dance music that many fans had been hoping they would develop in a similar vein as debut single, ‘Bright Tommorow’.
In ‘Tarot Sport’ we follow on from a similar structure as their debut, with their meaty drones, synths and simple chord sequences. But the production of iconic dance music producer DJ Andrew Weatherall helps Fuck Button display a progression in sound that should continue to build their demographic.
Debut single and opener ‘Surf Solar’ sets the tone of the record with its familiar fuzzy Fuck Buttons sound added with the 4/4 electronic beats which will become a common feature throughout the LP. ‘Tarot Sport’ seems to have a more melancholic feel in ‘The Lisbon Maru’ and ‘Olympians’ with it’s strong use of the minor key and marching rhythms where as with the latter features a notable influence of one of Weatherall’s former production clients, New Order.
The album still shows a glitch-y dirtiness in the only two short tracks (and by short, I mean just under 5 minutes). ‘Rough Steez’ and ‘Phantom Limb’ fall perfectly as tracks 2 and 5 respectively which break away from the epic, progressive jams but close off into their follow up tracks before they get too intense. The penultimate and album closer, ’Space Mountain’ and ’Flight of the Feathered Serpen’ could easily be mistaken to the naked ear as late nineties Trance anthems but leave us with an enjoyable sense of emotion that fans of Alternative music wouldn’t feel out of place listening to.
So how far should Andrew Hung and Benjamin Power go musically? In theory now, this second album could fuse together two sets of musical audiences, where ‘Tarot Sport’ might just possibly allow both the arty drone heads and techno ravers to expand their tastes even further. As a full length recording, it is by no means perfect. But this record could may well be the start of a small Tech-Noise phenomenon.
Freddy Rothman
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