Oct

18

Fuck Buttons – SOLD OUT! Fuck Buttons – SOLD OUT!

with Mystery Skulls & Robert A.A. Lowe

Fri October 18th, 2013

7:00PM

Main Space

Minimum Age: 18+

Doors Open: 6:00PM

Show Time: 7:00PM

Event Ticket: $18

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**ABSOLUTELY NO WILL-CALL NAME CHANGES WILL BE HONORED FOR THIS EVENT**
 
This is a general admission, standing event. Happy hour from 5-6pm including $3 beer and $5 well drinks.

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Fuck Buttons – SOLD OUT!

Four years on since they dropped 2009’s blistering Tarot Sport, Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung are back with their third LP Slow Focus.
 
When Hung and Power get together a unique chemistry emerges and nothing else is allowed to interfere. As Power puts it: “The one fundamental rule remains: we are in the same room when we write. The rest is all fair game.” Fuck Buttons have never really stopped writing together in the time between albums. “The actual writing for Slow Focus began fairly soon after we stopped touring,” says Hung, with Power adding “If we’ve had any time off, it’s been a few months, so though both albums might seem like two isolated events to everyone else, it doesn’t seem as much so to us. They’re more like snapshots of an ever evolving mess.”
 
Fuck Buttons latest opus is the first record they’ve produced themselves; it’s an album that attempts insular resonance. Using repetition to create hypnotic and suggestive states, Slow Focus veers ever more wildly between these parameters; a whole mood-shift taking place to darker, more turbulent evocations – something suggested as much in the album’s title.
 
“Slow Focus seemed like a very apt title when considering the sentiment of the music,” explains Power, “It almost feels like the moment your eyes take to readjust when waking, and realising that you’re in a very unusual and not a particularly welcoming place. There’s a brooding and almost violent theme throughout.” The album gained shape at the pair’s own Space Mountain studio, a place that was once used as a dairy (“It’s actually very isolated from the hustle and bustle of London. With the courtyard outside the front of it, it almost feels like you could be in rural France.”) However, it’s not their surroundings that guide them; rather their connection and imaginations that drive the unique sensory assault we’ve come to associate them with. “The music comes out of the relationship. We’ve always felt that our music doesn’t have a particular sense of geographical location attached to it, they say. “We like to think that we create our own new landscapes, and with Slow Focus it’s a very alien landscape.”
 
As Tarot Sport showed an increased boldness from predecessor Street Horrrsing, Fuck Buttons’ third is a confident stride forward again, signified in their decision to produce the record themselves. Quite apart from a duo whose music bristles with an often brazen menace, the production aspect of it was one of cautious learning and a humble desire to improve their skills. “The writing process revealed how production was intrinsic in that process but what we did lack was the knowledge of how to record and mix those productions properly” Hung admits. “This penultimate step – before mastering – was actually the step that took the longest time because we had to figure out how we could do it.” But persevere they did, and Slow Focus’ production fully recognises every textural change, from thunderous viscera to dark techno and slow oozing melancholia, allowing the dynamic nuances to achieve maximum impact. “To an extent, we’ve used producers as safety nets in the past and, whilst it is useful to have that filter,” says Hung, “we’ve always had a very specific idea of what our music should sound like and so it became the logical step to take that we should do it ourselves.”
 
Fuck Buttons were flung out into the perception of the global public last year when Danny Boyle opted to use their music in his breath-taking Olympics Opening Ceremony in London, after a recommendation from techno veterans Underworld whom were working with Boyle at the time. Now they’re ready to face the limelight in full again, with a string of festival dates coming up this Summer, including headline slots on The Park Stage at Glastonbury and at Green Man, then, later in the year, a full UK and European tour.
 
Fuck Buttons may have been away for a while, but Slow Focus looks set to put them right back where they were: as one of the most arresting electronic acts in the world today.
 
Photo credits: Alex De Mora // Lara Parsons

Mystery Skulls

Mystery Skulls is really the nom de plume of Los Angeles based electronic artist Luis Dubuc. Formerly from Venezuela, and then Dallas, Texas, Dubuc sounds like Prince fronting Daft Punk, mixing his inspirations of ’90’s R&B and New Jack Swing with EDM music and futuristic sounds.
 
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Robert A.A. Lowe

Robert A.A. Lowe on Twitter | Robert A.A. Lowe on Instagram

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (b. 1975) is an artist and composer that works with voice in the realm of spontaneous music often under the moniker of Lichens. Most recently, creating patch pieces with modular synthesizer and tonal vocal work has been a focus of live performance and recordings.

The marriage of synthesis and the voice has allowed for a heightened physicality in the way of ecstatic music, both in a live setting and recorded. The sensitivity of analogue modular systems echoes the organic nature of vocal expression which in this case is meant to put forth a trancelike state.

Lowe’s works on paper tend towards human relations to the natural/magical world and the repetition of motifs.Throughout a series of artist residences and commissions in 2014 Robert has focused on performance directly related to hypnagogic states. 2015 has seen further collaboration with french composer Ariel Kalma as well as Jóhann Jóhannsson, and theatre/installation based work with artist Alexandra Wolkowicz, as well as a focus on video synthesis. Through collaboration Robert has worked with Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, Sabrina Ratté, Rose Lazar, Nicolas Becker, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Tarek Atoui, Philippe Parreno, Evan Calder Williams, Ariel Kalma, Lucky Dragons, Alexandra Wolkowicz, Biba Bell, ADULT, Doug Aitken, and Rose Kallal, as well as many others.

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