Institute of Contemporary Arts

Fuck Buttons / Alexander Tucker

Date: 30 January 2008

Fuck Buttons. Photo: Gabriel Green

Jahan Nazeer 

This was to be the ICA's first gig of the year, headlining, a group whose name alone demands attention. Bristol's Fuck Buttons were in town, supported by Alexander Tucker. The night promised to be something rather special, as much an experience as a gig. The ICA bar was certainly buzzing as the sell-out crowd began to arrive and catch a mid-week drink or two. Inside the main room, the stage had been set up and was full of interesting music gear. Amongst the usual array of effects pedals and traditional instruments, I could see laptops and what looked like old children's toys. As the room filled up, the first act was onstage and ready to go.

Alexander Tucker is a guy who's been involved in various musical projects since the early nineties. Performing alone tonight, he sat at the front of the stage, surrounded by a few different instruments, pedals and microphones. As to how he was going to play all of these instruments on his own was soon to become clear. Starting with a long guitar intro, chords were then sampled and looped, live! With these chords still looping, the guitar was put down and a cello picked up. With a cello riff sampled and added, Alexander moved onto the violin, and then added an effected vocal. Once sequenced, these sounds were then manipulated using effects pedals. Adding to it all the time and singing over the top, the amount of sound now being produced by this one lone figure on stage was incredible. Chant-like repetitions filled the venue as seemingly whimsical phrases became lush soundscapes before our very eyes then overloaded into a distorted sea of sound, only to re-emerge as a pensive ballad or a journey through orchestral psychedelia. Alexander Tucker, understated and busy on stage, captivated the audience, letting the music draw us into his world of un-tuned guitars and other-worldly drones. Running through a fifty minute, continuously merging set, the ICA crowd definitely got in the zone.

Fuck Buttons are Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung. An experimental duo from Bristol, the group has been around since 2004 and originally started in order to make a soundtrack for a film Andrew had made. Taking the stage donning matching black hoodies, they stood at either end of a table full of musical gizmos and gadgets. A long intro of tinkling keyboard parts and tough synth bass platforms took the atmosphere straight into post-apocalyptic territories. As if scoring the opening scene to a Terminator-like sci-fi film, the Fuck Buttons took the helm of the ICA spaceshuttle and showed us some of the sights and sounds of the darkest sides of the future. Distorted drones, resonating bass swoops and glitchy synth parts develop the impending primordial tension as vocals shriek and scream with startling urgency. Bouncing at their work stations, the Fuck Buttons appear as crazed sonic travellers, navigating their vessel through the most treacherous of manifestations. Then, out of this landscape of computer nature, industrial drums break loose, tribal and pounding, sending parts of the ICA into a euphoric trance-like dance and filling the room with a thudding electronic heartbeat. Again, pretty much performed as one continuous hour-long journey, the Fuck Buttons left the crowd suspended in the industrial wastelands of the future and made off into the night.

So a good night at the ICA, the mid-week sell-out audience seemed enthralled by the evening's proceedings and a chat with some of them outside only backed this up. Bring on 2008.

Fuck Buttons Photo: Gabriel Green

Alexander Tucker. Photo: Gabriel Green