Boy Toys

Photo by Matthew Walford Fuck Buttons isn’t the latest Internet teen-sluts from the American Midwest, but two London based boys who like to make noise and call it music. Using an array of equipment culled from boot sales and kid stores, the duo of Andrew Chung and Benjamin John Power make transcendental sounds that have much more in common with Mogwai’s (John Cummings is producing their forthcoming album) freak outs and bands like Black Dice and Growing than the faux-metal caterwauling and R2D2-being-raped screams of most contemporary noise acts. And like Black Dice, they’re doing their part of bringing good looks and dress sense to the official Ugly Noise Party. Vice: Fuck Buttons, eh? How do you reckon you’ll explain that to your folks? Andy: My parents don’t give a shit about what I do as long as I make a good living. So the way they see it, I could be forcing an ostrich to fuck my nostril every night as long as I have a job as a banker. With regards to the name, my parents don’t speak English very well, so as long as I say “fuck” or any other swear-word in a passive tone, they don’t pick up it’s a bad word, ha ha… They wouldn’t like me being in a band with a swear-word in the name, unless I was a banker. Ben: My mother just giggles every time she says the name of my band. Is it us, or is the noise scene right now made up of ugly white boys with arts funding? How do you guys fit in there? Benjamin: We met skateboarding when we were 16. Andy had the Pringles logo cut into his grip tape. Then we lost contact for a few years, but reunited when we both attended art school in Bristol. Andrew: We both have an art background but I think neither of us would say that any kind of art movement directly influences our music. However neither of us would deny the fabrics of our evolutions in taste and we would say that anything that gets our blood flowing, both aural and visual, direct our musical intentions. So you’re more like Wolf Eyes, and you like bending circuits and stuff? Benjamin: We were definitely interested in that scene and we first started out with similar archaic nihilistic intentions. But what we were actually interested in were the textures involved in that kind of music and very quickly we developed our own interests with those textures. We’re interested in noise as a sonic tool, not as an entity. What has been you best buy when it comes to equipment, in terms of value for noise? I buy most of the instruments from car boot sales, and the best keyboards have been the MT series Casios. Firstly because they look fantastic and secondly because they use semi-analogue circuitry, and as a result the sound they emit is extremely fuzzy and warm. The keyboard that Ben uses on stage is an MT-11 and that’s definitely my best buy. TONY WILSON
Fuck Buttons debut album Street Horrrsing is out now on ATP Recordings.