Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus

Music as art. You remember that, right? Before it was all just a download-what-you-want free for all and everything lost any sense of permanence or meaning? Well with their third album, ‘Slow Focus’, Fuck Buttons have produced a truly, genuinely beautiful piece of art. At times bleak and nigh on disturbing yet always thick with complexity, it’s a record which takes many, many listens to get to grips with and rewards repeat listens with almost unbelievable depth.

Kicking off with the 8 minutes of swirling, mechanical brilliance that is ‘Brainfreeze’ this is an LP which ebbs and flows and oozes with delicious ease and grand intent. The production is sky-scraping, allowing the slowly developing song structures to be fully and powerfully realised. ‘Prince’s Prize’ in particular is a smorgasbord of retro gaming noise blended with fuzz laden low end and crackling synthesisers – it should sound twee and shit, but it doesn’t, it sounds really great. This gives way to the sinister tones of ‘Stalker’ one of a pair of 10 minute long closers which build the album to a striking denouement. The second of these, ‘Hidden XS’ is arguably the highlight of the record, its repeated motifs seeping into your psyche almost by osmosis and producing a quite startling effect, especially if you are in possession of a decent pair of headphones with which to funnel every last drop of noise into your ears.

There is crystalline beauty on offer here as well as thunking great passages of dirty, nasty noise and it is this rise and fall which makes it a) so compelling and b) best listened to in one go, all the way through, with no breaks. Far be it for us to suggest that this might be a record best consumed with the enhancement of some drugs but if you were to do that one can only imagine that the impact of an already wonderful record would be increased exponentially. Buy it, love it, get really high to it, thank us later.