If you haven’t yet listened to Fuck Button’s Slow Focus then where have you been? The first album in 4 years from Bristolian duo Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power has been so eagerly anticipated that it actually entered the top 40 of the Official UK Album Chart, peaking at number 30.
While “F*** Buttons” (as the people at the Charts Company carefully renamed them) may have looked a little awkward parked between One Direction (no. 29) and David Guetta (no.31), Slow Focus is anything but unsure of itself. Given their fairly lengthy hiatus (which included Power wandering off to do his own thing as Blanck Mass), you might have expected a somewhat tentative return, the understandable outcome of an artist re-finding their feet. Instead, we have what is almost certainly the strongest work from the pair to date.
That said, something has happened to Fuck Buttons in the interim. While they’ve still got the ear for aural textures that they always had, there’s less of the slow burning, soaring noise that made Tarot Sport so magnificent. Instead, Slow Focus excels in a very different way. It’s a much more aggressive beast, the hooks more visceral, and the rhythms more weighty, pounding their way into your head. Whereas Tarot Sport was almost ethereal, the tracks on Slow Focus are earthy, elemental, animalistic.
In terms of stand-out tracks, you can take you pick really – there isn’t a mediocre moment in the whole 52 minutes. Nonetheless, ‘The Red Wing’ contains one the album’s more interesting moments. Beginning with a pseudo-hip-hop beat, it’s soon overwhelmed by a grinding drone, which provides the foundation for a 7 minute build into a towering wall of noise. When the wall finally tumbles under its own weight, the original looped rhythm, there all along, returns to the centre stage before stuttering to an end. Magic.
If you haven’t yet bought the album, then head over to ATP Recordings, and grab their first ever Top 40 album. Dates for the Slow Focus tour can be found here.