Olympians

I had more new music lined up for today but I'll push it back into next week after last night's commute and the surprise that shuffle sprung up for me driving home in the dark and some snow flurries. This week has been difficult, the hangover of all the anniversaries and reminders of Isaac's birthday and death during November taking their toll, work adding to it all and the general lethargy and tiredness that sets in during winter all adding up. As I drove home this song came on, one I haven't heard for some time. 

Olympians

The effect it had on me was huge, filling the car with the wall of sound and giving me a shot of something. I was lost in it for the ten minutes it played. Olympians is by the duo Fuck Buttons, a track from their second album Tarot Sport, released back in 2009 and produced by Andrew Weatherall at his Scrutton Street studio in East London. The whole album is a riot of layers of sound, crunching rhythms, glass shattering pinpoint toplines and waves of joyous and ecstatic noise. Olympians is all of that and more. It's a trip, a musical experience, one of those tracks that makes musical description feel a bit redundant- you have to listen to it, be immersed in it. 

Fuck Buttons music was created in two suitcases, Ben Power and Andrew Hung creating their layers of hardcore ambient/ drone/ industrial/ psychedelic/ noise via FX pedals, synths, toy instruments and home made bits and bobs. Weatherall produced the album adding some sonic depth to their sound and beefing up the rhythms. He said in an interview that working on it for nine hours a day was akin to doing hard physical labour. 

Famously Danny Boyle selected it as one of the songs for the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony and what a truly odd and uplifting experience it was to sit watching that and hear the music of Fuck Buttons come through the TV as the athletes paraded round the stadium. The opening ceremony has become mythologised in recent times as the last gasp of a better, more inclusive, warmer, friendlier, pre- Brexit. The world of 2009 when Tarot Sport came out and the London games of summer 2012, over ten years ago now, do both seem in many ways like a different one to the one we have now. 

Maybe best to stick to what's what and in front of us- a Friday in early December, cold and dark with the Christmas holiday too far away to be touchable. Better to press play on Olympians and let Fuck Buttons engulf you for ten minutes of glorious escapism. 

Sweet Love

We've been watching Top Boy recently, all four series, back to back. Set in a fictional north London housing estate in Hackney called Summerhouse and detailing the lives of its residents, Top Boy is centred mainly around two young men, Dushane and Sully, who make a living selling drugs. The first two series were on Channel 4 in 2011 and 2013. After that it was dropped and then picked up by rapper Drake and Netflix and two further series were made, one in 2019 and the fourth this year (with one more underway now). One of the episodes at the end of series one saw the tension rising, violence between drug gangs increasing and lives being ended or ruined, quickly and brutally, and the unmistakeable twinkling sounds of this track began to play, looped a little, fading in and out as the drama unfolded. 

Sweet Love For Planet Earth

Fuck Buttons released Sweet Love For Planet Earth on their Street Horsing album back in 2008, a monstrous piece of post rave/ post rock melodic noise, the sound of continents colliding and planets crashing into each other. It's a monumental piece of music, building to a chaotic conclusion. The same year they put out a 12" single of Colours Move with an Andrew Weatherall remix of Sweet Love... on the B-side. 

Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Weatherall keeps the strange and beautiful melodies and the sheets of noise while welding a huge rhythm underneath, a crunching kick drum and throbbing bassline and lets everything go on and on, in ever whirling circles, building the tension before a heart stopping pause and re- entry at four minutes forty. It's the far end of the arc of a curve he stated back in 1991 with his remix of Soon for My Bloody Valentine, noise refitted for weirded out dancefloors. Exhilarating stuff. 

Rave On

I'm a bit of a dipper with Mogwai. I've got Young Team, Hawk Is Howling and one other- can't remember which off the top of my head. All three are excellent albums. They managed to pull off the trick of being always the same, always different. They have really good song titles. The new album- Rave Tapes- has unexpectedly wormed its way into my ears over the last week and is highly recommended. Quiet bits, noisier bits, some beautiful melodies, guitar lines and keyboards building intricately, a few crescendos, atmosphere, a bit of groove and rumbling drum patterns, the sampled ramblings of a Led Zep fan.

Here, one set of noisy boys (Mogwai) remix another set of noisy boys (Fuck Buttons).

Colours Move (Mogwai Remix)

Dog Years

I'm not fully sold on the latest Fuck Buttons album yet- they set very high standards with the previous one- but it's early days. I need to live with it a bit longer- the thing is, their music is not stuff you can ignore and I have to be in the right mood for their full on, electronic, wigout, melodic-noise assault.

Year Of The Dog

Weathertube

There's been nothing from Lord Sabre here at Bagging Area for well over a week so here's a couple of clips from Youtube to remedy the situation.

First up, Weatherall, Terry Farley and Pete Heller interviewed for the long lost and lamented Snub TV (from BBC2, late 80s). The clip is memorable partly for Weatherall's long, curly hair and biker boots. The trio discuss London's acid house scene and how they helped  invent it. Also features a Bocca Juniors video.



Second up, Weatherall djing in a club in Belgium last year. Somewhat better than your average club clip due to being filmed and put together by someone who seems to know what they're doing rather than a drunkard with a mobile phone, it features a heavily bearded Weatherall playing cds (gasp, shock, horror, not vinyl!) to  a crowd significantly younger than him. Judging from the clip the Belgians haven't banned smoking in clubs yet and there's always a girl dancing on her own right in front of the record cd players. Records played in the clip- his own remix of Fuck Buttons Sweet Love For Planet Earth and Briosky's Radio Anatomy (I think).



Enjoy your Saturday.

Para-Olympians

On Saturday February 5th 2011 I posted Olympians by Fuck Buttons, the stand out track from their Tarot Sport album and wrote this;

Ten minutes plus of joyful, melodic, ecstatic, headspinning, roomfilling noise, drums and production courtesy of Andrew Weatherall. If the organisers of London 2012 use this for the opening ceremony it'll be an interesting games.

Which was unusually prescient of me seeing as they did. Looking at the back cover of the Opening Ceremony Isles Of Wonder cd in the supermarket the other day I saw that Fuck Buttons have been renamed F Buttons, which amused me briefly before going off to do the big shop. This was another huge track off their 2009 lp.

Flight Of The Feathered Serpent

Good luck to everyone involved in the Paralympics (organisers, volunteers and especially athletes), starting today. Let's hope its as successful as the games a couple of weeks ago were.

Friday Night Noise

It's Friday, and this is about as far from rockabilly as you can get. Blanck Mass is the solo work of Benjamin Power, one half of Fuck Buttons. I don't know if he's Mr Fuck or Mr Buttons. This track, Land Disasters, is several minutes of noise- some white noise, some guitar feeding back noise and some of that lovely analogue synth noise. It's a soothing noise. It could do your head in at times I imagine. It might also help clear up who plays what in Fuck Buttons.

Land Disasters

Gold Medal

The standout track from Fuck Buttons 2009 album Tarot Sport- Olympians. Ten minutes plus of joyful, melodic, ecstatic, headspinning, roomfilling noise, drums and production courtesy of Andrew Weatherall. If the organisers of London 2012 use this for the opening ceremony it'll be an interesting games. I've sometimes wondered about the band's name- is it just two words jammed together, one being offensive in order to catch the eye? An attempt at being 100% Googleable? Or did they overhear a jacket fastening conversation? 'It's zips for me, I can't handle buttons, fuck buttons'.

Olympians.mp3

Default Mode- More Audrey

One of the best records from the last few years- Fuck Buttons' Sweet Love For Planet Earth, remixed by Andrew Weatherall. Music to lose yourself in. Smoking.

Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Andrew Waetherall Remix).mp3