Preview: Fuck Buttons/Subterranean

RECOMMENDED

Fuck Buttons got their band’s name by filtering their endless textural destroyers into colorful child’s-toys-turned-aural-tidal-wave-triggers. They wanted to be as playful as they are visceral. When I listen to their music through my earbuds at my work-desk, the wondrous build of their instrumentals turns my rote data entry into the staircase to outer space I’ve always wanted it to be. I dream of being trapped inside a tiny room with Fuck Buttons—Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung, two Brits—and letting them have their way with my ears and even my body; I want these tones to consume me. This year’s “Slow Focus,” their third LP, may promise a little less of the epic (perhaps having your songs used by Danny Boyle in the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremonies would make you scale back from your rush toward the tides of infinity, too), and more of the playful. This is a good thing, as it’s allowing the duo’s sound to expand into something less monomaniacally bent on melting beautifully as it shoots toward the sun. It’s allowing them to sound more multi-cultural: show-stealing track “The Red Wing” makes (delightfully) zero sense within the context of any known genre. Since their emergence with “Street Horsssing” in 2008, the group’s place in music has always been their own, but now they’re rearranging their imprint; changing it, so as to impress us with something more distinct, more beastly and gnarly and strange. They seem at an edge between the precision of their chamber-made ascensions of songs, and something more improvisational and daring. If they deviate further from their mystifying formula live, it could make for some truly alarming dance-offs; ones I’d never miss. (John Wilmes)

October 14 at Subterranean, 2011 West North, (773)278-6600. 9pm. $15. 17+.

Author: Kenneth Preski