Gig Review: Damn Knobs

Fuck Buttons, at Brighton Audio, September 27th 2009

I admit it. Sometimes during a live performance, my mind drifts. It adventures into distant lands. I lose all focus on the show before me. It happens quite a lot. It's a trance that I have to mentally fling myself out of.

"Where’d you go to Emily?"

"I dunno". Shrugs shoulders.

When I accidently stumbled across Fuck Buttons at Truck Festival in 2007, I was blown so far away they had to look for me in another field. When I saw that they were playing at Bestival 2008, I bought a ticket. I was probably the only person who was inspired to buy a ticket for Bestival to see a band that wasn’t even on the final line-up. As for my undergraduate degree, false advertising drew me in.

I saw Fuck Buttons this September, two years after my original airing. Two years is a long time. Two years older, and a little more jaded, would Fuck Buttons reconnect the broken circuits in my brain?

Last night, I decided three things.

1. Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds should be remade using a Fuck Buttons soundtrack, particularly with lots of inaudible and scary nonsense emanating from a child's toy microphone. It would be ace.

2. I would love to watch Zombie Zombie and Fuck Buttons jamming together. I would pay big money to.

3. The drum machine was too loud and too unvaried.

I was completely entranced. My jaw hung in childlike wonder. I drifted to distant lands once only, for about 30 seconds. Then returned to transfixed.

So, what was missing? Why did I come away titillated to exasperation, clutching slightly sore parts? Where was the final climax?

I expected a big ballsy kick in the face. I anticipated it at every turn. Instead, I got bored of loops. I would go again though. I'm sure the climax will come. It's just around the corner.

I highly recommend taking a gander at the support act: Zun Zun Egui. It would be wrong to use words at this juncture. Just check out El Chuppakabra. It's like going insane.

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A friend has gained a new nickname. It's Captain Scarlett. Oh, me, oh my, what a theme tune. This is for Captain Scarlet of Hove.

Download MP3: Captain Scarlett Theme (courtesy of space1999.net)