Interview: Fuck Buttons

Continuing our extra-time round up of interviews with the best bands of last year, we turn to Fuck Buttons who rather blew this writer away for one a couple of months ago with the release of Tarot Sport, their second album which somehow put their first in the shade. Just before they came to Ireland late last year, we spoke to one half of the Bristol duo, Benjamin John Power.

There was a pretty quick turnaround from album number one with Tarot Sport coming out a little over a year after Street Horrrsing, something you don't tend to see too much nowadays, particularly with successful albums. Did you just get straight back into the studio as soon as you could?

"Yeah, it's what we do, day in a day out. We just like to keep ourselves busy. As soon as that eight-month tour of playing the same same set every night was done, and even as we were in the process of the tour, we were just itching to write new material and record again. We saw that we could get a record out in the timescale so we just pushed to do it."

Compared to Street Horrrsing, the first thing that struck me about the new abum is that while  it's a noisy record - you know what you're getting with Fuck Buttons - it wasn't as immediately harsh and was more melodic. Was that something you were aiming for?

"Yeah... when write new tracks we never have any set criteria or any kind of ambition as to what exactly we want to achieve. A song will come about for us through lengthy jamming and just exploring the equipment we have in front of us. We didn't set out to write an album that was more melodic, I mean I don't necessarily see it as more melodic. The way I see it is that Street Horrrsing is a lot more skeletal, it's a lot more stripped down whereas with Tarot Sport, we accumulated so much more equipment in the time we were writing that it makes for the sound to be a lot richer. And it goes off on tangents. I think Street Horrrsing is very direct but Tarot Sport has limbs and is more full-bodied. Both Andy and I are fans of minimal music so we don't want to put down Street Horrrsing or anything but we just wanted to explore the richer possibilities."

Was that one of the main differences, the equipment? What sort of stuff have you bought or found over the last year that has made that difference?

"We're constantly trying to find new equipment. I could go on and list stuff for ages (laughs) but one thing that we wanted to lose, or replace was the laptop because I really think it gave the wrong impression out about us. A lot of people thought that we were laptop musicians and that's not the case at all. We pretty much play everything live, and there's just a few samples or beats being triggered off that laptop. That's something we really wanted to do but everything else is kind of free. We just try and get our hands on whatever we can and have a play around with it."

Obviously the man in the production chair changed this time as well. What was it like working with someone as highly regarded as Andrew Weatherall?

"It was fantastic. He did a remix of 'Sweet Love For Planet Earth' for us and off the back of that, we realised he had a really solid grasp of what we were trying to get across and he was very sensitive to the kind of components and different layers of sound and even the space between the sound. It was just fantastic. He has a very clever way of working and a great way of distancing himself so he can come back and look at things from a clear perspective. It was a great experience."

What were the main differences then in working with him and with Mogwai's John Cummings on the last record? Were they very different kinds of people to work with?

"Yes, very different kinds but it's difficult to say. Street Horrrsing was our first record and we were just so eager to get it done and John did a totally fantastic job. It's a very honest document of the sounds we were making at the time and the same with Andrew so it's really hard to say because they were very different records. Their ways of working were very similar, they were very passionate and sensitive to our sound."

I know you do the artwork and videos yourselves, is there ever an reluctance in giving up some of the creative process to a producer? Would you ever consider producing a record yourselves?

"If we could and if thought we'd be able to do the songs justice live, but neither of us are particularly skilled engineers or whatever so it would probably not be wise for us to do it now but we're constantly learning new things, programmes etc so in the future, yeah it would be an option."

While we were keeping in touch with recording updates on MySpace, it seemed like you spent something like three weeks recording the album which seems, given the scope of it, to be quite a short amount of time. Was it as intensive a period as it sounds?

"It was intense because like I said we had this time scale to work within and we obviously wanted to try and get it done and get the record this year to keep momentum going. But if we hadn't done it, we wouldn't have rushed it out of anything. The first record only took us a week to record. This one took us four times but there were a lot more elements. So it was intense, yeah, but there were still a lot of ideas being thrown around and it was a very creative time."

You're signed to ATP and everyone knows the really unique festivals they put on but perhaps know less about them as a label. What are they like to work with?

"It's fantastic. It's more of a family thing than a label. They don't make us do anything we don't want to do and they don't impose anything on us. It's not a big, big label, they just have a few select artists who they love and can them the attention they need. It's a good, creative platform."