Monster Movie: Fuck Buttons Lumber Toward Musicality

Photo: Alex de Mora

By Dave Cantor

Andrew Hung wasn’t available on a recent Monday to chat. He was at the movies, watching “Godzilla.”

His British duo, Fuck Buttons, isn’t exactly the same thing as that film’s misunderstood beast, who in its newest incarnation is something of an anti-hero. But kinda. Since 2008, Fuck Buttons has crafted three albums’ worth of monstrously noisy electronic music, beginning with its six-track “Street Horrrsing.” What Hung and his partner, Benjamin John Power, couldn’t have expected is that such an offensively named group, making such abrasive music, would wind up being something of an international success. On the strength of a track off its second album, “Tarot Sport,” the duo had its music included in the opening ceremonies for the 2012 London Olympics. The ten-minute song’s tenor didn’t necessarily fit the heroic intention of the athletic event, but that’s of little importance. What it means, though, is that Fuck Buttons’ compositions connect with a wider audience than it has any right to.

“The amount of noise around you is infinite,” Hung said a day after taking in that monster movie. “But to turn it into music takes a lot of patience and confidence.”

In an increasingly technology-based world, electronics and the pratfalls that accompany modern society are more and more difficult to avoid. Godzilla knows. Hung does, too, parsing the avalanche of noise he encounters, wheedling it down to as cohesive a bit of sound as he and his partner can.

“I remember saying to Dan [Snaith, who performs as Caribou] once, ‘How long does it take to write a track?’ And he said, ‘I can write you a track in a day, but it’ll probably sound like shit,’” Hung said. “I asked him, ‘For the last album you did, “Swim,” how many tracks did you do?’ He said he did like a thousand or so. He was able to extract ten tracks … It’s forced development. I understand that.”

What’s surprising about the process Fuck Buttons engage is how slapdash and unplanned it all seems, despite Hung’s self-reflective nature. He said the duo convenes and just jams, recording entire practices, forgetting about what they’ve done and revisiting what’s been captured by an iPhone later on. Yeah, they initially record on an iPhone, and most of what’s caught live is trash, Hung said.

That garbage aesthetic asserts itself on “Slow Focus,” Fuck Button’s disc from last year, but in a positive way. There’s a bit more organic-sounding percussion spread across the album and its seven extended tracks (read: it sounds like the guys pounding out rhythm on reclaimed trash cans) than on previous efforts. Colossal electronics still lumber across each song’s backbeat, “Sentients” being particularly disturbing. Keyboards stutter out almost-speech with shredded, synthetic noises layered atop, shimmering and alarming. Discerning the track’s structure might be beside the point, though—most songs simply build to a peak and fall away, too heavy to support themselves. It’s almost architectural, instead of composerly. Almost.

“I do see us more as artists than musicians,” Hung said. “Musicians, there’s more craft in it, and I don’t really see design in what we do—it’s more accidental if anything.”

Photo: Alex de Mora

So, Fuck Buttons isn’t a duo of composers, and they’re not really a proper band. Hung and Power are the anti-everything; a misunderstood beast. So hearing that the electronic duo isn’t supremely engaged with its gear, especially given the fuck-all attitude Hung exudes about the rest of the duo’s ties to the music world, isn’t too shocking.

“We’re also jamming through [guitar] amps, and they’re really shit amps that we use,” he said, explaining that neither he nor Power are guitarists, either.

With Fuck Buttons’ rise to relative acclaim over the last several years, the duo has, however, picked up some accoutrements of the music world. Since performing at larger and larger venues over time—even putting in an appearance on the Glastonbury Festival’s 2013 bill alongside the Rolling Stones—there’re a few gear mongers hanging around backstage.

“Recently, we’ve had a tour manager who’s very helpful,” Hung said. “He’s been insistent on helping us set up our gear. It is really weird, but it’s quite pleasant at the same time.”

There’s that pushing against normative music industry standards again. Even as Fuck Buttons increases in visibility and influence—a light show’s set to be brought Stateside for this tour—Hung doesn’t buy into his lot in life as a for-real musician. Who needs roadies, anyway?

However the future shakes out for Fuck Buttons, there’s still more science fiction in its future. Since Hung already caught “Godzilla”on the big screen, he’s ready for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” to come out in July, leaving only questions about how those damned, dirty apes are going to factor into future sets of Fuck Buttons’ music.

June 11 at Bottom Lounge, 1375 West Lake, (312)666-6775. 8pm. $15. 17+.