Fuck Buttons - Surf Solar

This single does weirdly sound like a lot of penguins talking to each other really fast while someone bangs a huge drum next to them and screams. Fuck Buttons may not be for everyone. Bristol boys Andrew Hung and Benjamin Power formed in 2004 aiming to create powerful, painful noise music. Since then, despite becoming equally obsessed with adding beautiful sounds, melodies and rhythms to their songs, they remain a band that make noise.

That is not to say noise is ugly. They draw comparisons with bands such as Mogwai, Yo La Tengo, Spaceman 3 and Animal Collective. They are not afraid to hold a beat and build it to a climax. 'Surf Solar' is the new single from the up-coming  album Tarot Sport, follow up to last years very successful and accessible debut 'Street Horrrsing', and this time the band start on a high.

It feels like a single from a second album. Still the same tribal drumming, tones swinging back and forth, and long, drawn out chords. The sound still isn't exhausting though (having said that this is an edit I've just listened too, the album version is ten minutes long...), as it is Fuck Buttons in a new light; hectic, with a sense of immediacy. Whereas Street Horrrsing seemed to slowly come out of nowhere, with a laid back sense of being a great album, one that will eventually be heard, Surf Solar is the band demanding to be listened too.

It's louder and faster than anything they've done before, and for a single from an up-coming album, in my eyes, that makes it exciting.  "It has an emotion attached to it that is unique to us: one of anxiety. It's an urgent track". Hung claims, and I'd have to agree. Produced by DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, nothing on this track, or b-side New Crossbow, sounds like a mistake or something to be taken for granted. Everything is impeccably put together and immediately recognisable as Fuck Buttons.