Fuck Buttons: Slow Focus

DIY UK duo in brain-bending, Top 40 album shocker!

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To say this release was hyped is a bit of an understatement. Previously these bedroom synth buddies caused mesmeric ripples at indie events in the lead-up to their 2008 debut Street Horrrsing. Glasto embraced them as 2009’s Tarot Sport appeared, their abrasive DIY noisewave brightened with a Screamadelica zing.

But it wasn’t until Olympians and Surf Solar were used in the opening ceremony at the 2012 Olympics that the public went Fuck Buttons bonkers. So what to do next?

Exactly this. A giant slab of brain-bending cinematronica funnelling 40 years of electro exploration, with thecontrols set to oblivion. Here’s how it plays out: opener Brainfreeze’s Sat In Your Lap percussion overlays a mechanical Metropolis treadmill; Year Of The Dog builds a house version of Terry Riley’s Rainbow… and The Red Wing takes Tom Tom Club for a stroll with Justice. Prince’s Prize fires arcade noises at Come To Daddy, then Stalker’s crushing menace melds with Hidden XS’s Michael Mann mentasm.

It’s all greatcoats swirling in slo-mo, fiery demons and ice-blue laser overload. That’s the movie in my mind, and maybe in those of the record buyers who put it in the UK Top 40 too.

Jo Kendall
Jo Kendall

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer with 23 years in music magazines since joining Kerrang! as office manager in 1999. But before that Jo had 10 years as a London-based gig promoter and DJ, also working in various vintage record shops and for the UK arm of the Sub Pop label as a warehouse and press assistant. Jo's had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson's favourite flute (!), asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit, and invented several ridiculous editorial ideas such as the regular celebrity cooking column for Prog, Supper's Ready. After being Deputy Editor for Prog for five years and Managing Editor of Classic Rock for three, Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, where she's been since its inception in 2009, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London, hoping to inspire the next gen of rock, metal, prog and indie creators and appreciators.