Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.10.2008, Blaðsíða 6

THE FUCK Buttons come from Bristol, England (the home to some of the best progressive electronic artists of recent times - Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack) and last night’s performance at the Art Museum was one of
the most keenly-anticipated shows of the festival. The Grapevine beat the rush and
had a chat to Andy Hung and Ben Power before their gig.
So when your manager told you that you’d be playing in Iceland did you have
visions of a gig at a frozen food store?
Ben: We’ve never been here before so it’s quite exciting but obviously the place
isn’t in the best health at the moment. I’m sure the festival is going to be good.
Are you inf luenced by any Icelandic bands? You’ve got quite a post-rock sound…
B: I wouldn’t have said so, no. We’re in a position where we can stand on our own
two feet and feel comfortable with making the sounds.
But maybe you’ve listened to some of the same bands at some point and you have
similar references?
B: There have been Icelandic bands I’ve listened to in the past. The obvious ones
like Bjork and múm, but I don’t think we’d cite them as influences.
You’re quite well-known for making a lot of noise between the two of you, how do
you manage it? It must be quite tricky to keep it all going in a live show.
B: I think we’ve got a stage where we can hone in on any instrumentation and
just make a wall of sound until we’re pleased with the sound we’re making and fine
tune it.
Would you say it’s a good mix of live instrumentation and more technical ele-
ments?
B: I’d say it’s more live instrumentation. We do have a laptop on stage but that’s
not really doing a great deal – in a live show it might trigger a sample.
What was making your album with John Cummings of Mogwai like?
B: It was amazing. When we were asked to think of someone to produce our
record I thought of John and he had the right idea of what we wanted things to
sound like. We made a really great replication of the live stuff we were playing at
the time.
You’ve also been touring with Mogwai and Caribou lately – how was that, were
there any particular dates that stood out?
B: We’ve spent a total of four days in New York, playing shows on those days, and
I feel that there’s so much more to explore. I think we both feel the same about that
place. We’d like to go back and we have a lot of friends there. It’s the place to be.
I’ve read that DJs sometime struggle to give the type of music you play a name or
give you genre. What’s the worst attempt you’ve heard at describing you sound?
B: I’m not sure really but obviously some people will struggle to actually say Fuck
Buttons on the air…
How do they get round that?
B: However they can, a lot of DJs just say “F Buttons”
Do you regret choosing that name because it’s so restrictive in terms of getting
radio play?
B: I don’t regret it at all. It’s quite funny as it’s not like they leave much to the
imagination. People know what’s going on.
I’ve read a few strange descriptions of your live performances...can I read a couple
out and you tell me what you think.
Drowned in Sound: Ben and Andrew look like a pair of wild dogs circling each other,
preparing to attack. A cap sticks out of the back pocket of Ben’s skinny jeans, and in
a blur of bobbing movement, it could be a tail.
Andy: That’s an interesting way of looking at it, I guess! It certainly circles the
primal aspect of our music.
Filter Magazine: In the very beginning; before any of the vocals, drumming, key-
boards, dancing or convulsions, there were just two men at opposite sides of a table
bobbing and fiddling with knobs. And it was mesmerizing.
A: I like the idea of that…
Bobbing and fiddling with knobs on stage?
A: Well, without the religious aspect of course
You describe your band as being ‘rainbow rockers’…
A: We definitely have a visual approach to sound, we’re able to communicate to
each other, in a visual sense, about the sounds we make. It sounds quite pretentious
but I think we are able to see colours, shapes and texture in our sound. It’s the idea
of a technicolour sound.
A psychedelic element to your music, maybe?
A: Not intentionally but I can definitely see that people may get a psychedelic
feeling from our music.
FuCk
BuTTONSTurning On The
rainbOw
FRi
DAY
wOrDS bY ben h. MurraY
THAT FALL they won the Global Battle of the Bands contest in global finance capitol London, England, scored a deal with Iceland’s very own shady and lov-
able Peter Grant-type manager Gis von Ice and commenced
conquering the world. Their performance at last year’s Air-
waves festival was nothing short of awe-inspiring, as have the
countless concerts I’ve seen them play in the interim. These
boys are everything we want our rock bands to be: honest, au-
thentic, open, quirky, happy-go-lucky – and their dark, brood-
ing moments, courtesy of conf licted 23-year-old preacher’s-
son cum vocalist Pætur Zachariasson, give that sense of
doom every good rock band needs. But mostly, they rock. I
met up with a couple of them at Kaffibarinn last month to
chat about their new album, their impending Airwaves per-
formance, and how much those lazy, colonialist Danes suck.
“Have we thought about changing our band name? No,
never. Is it bad? The thought has never crossed our minds.
Even when people started telling us that they hated the name.
That’s a good thing. It’s the beauty of our name: people hate
it. That’s great. It’s so awesomely cliché. We get a lot of hate
mail – there are about five hate clubs, just for the name. ‘I love
the music, but I hate the name’, they say. Screw ‘em.”
Pætur Zachariasson is in a right good mood, in town to
make a video with a renowned Icelandic director who shall
remain unnamed for now. Drummer Rógvi Lamhauge sits
by his side, sipping on a beer. They tell me how they started
a band exactly two years ago in September of 2006, and how
they are now negotiating an international release for their
excellent Grapevine-approved début, Black Diamond Train.
“We started playing to go to the first Global Battle of the
Bands thing. We didn’t win that one, but we went again the
year after and won it. Actually, we played a lot of the same
songs in the second attempt. The GBOB thing was a good
incentive to start a band, we had been talking about it forever,”
they tell me.
We discuss how their international rampage (they guess
they’ve played around ten countries in two continents this
year alone, in a constant quest to promote their cause), has
affected the band and their friendship. Already there is a cau-
sality, a founding member found the commitment to their
international agenda to be overburdening so the old friends
parted ways this summer. Having witnessed them working
their asses off at various festivals over the last year, not to
mention the foreseeable strain of recording their righteous
début, I ask if they feel they’ve moved too fast in their short
lifespan. Pætur answers in a predictably cocky manner, yet
somehow manages to remain earnest throughout:
“No I don’t think so. We haven’t gone ahead of ourselves,
we haven’t moved to New York and spent a lot of money on
shit – we’re still based in the Faroes – so it’s definitely not
too fast. We’ve been preparing for this kind of success in our
heads for a long time. We’ve had a lot of faith in ourselves, and
our songs and our music. And we really believe that this could
make it for us. We’ve thought: our music is really good, and
when we go abroad with it, people will like it. And that’s exact-
ly what’s happened. Things have definitely not been happen-
ing too fast. Since I quit playing football and started playing
music, I’ve been preparing for something like this, and really
been up for it... attacking it with fire. That’s what we’ll do.”
Your lyrics are really dark, especially when juxtaposed
with your cheerful songs. Are you depressed?
“Yeah, most of the time. I guess the people from the Faroes
are depressed because of everything, the Danes, the darkness
and isolation. Oppressed and depressed. Most of our [the
Faroes’] music is dark. Do we support the cause of Faroese
independence? Yeah, definitely. We had some philosophy les-
sons in the university; it’s like what Sartre said of essence be-
fore existence, a person has to prove itself to become a human
being. The same way a nation has to prove itself to be a nation.
The Danes have been putting money into Faroese society for
the last fifty years, and so the Faroese economy is bigger than
it should be. Just like in Greenland [Denmark’s other 21st cen-
tury European colony]. It’s not healthy for the economy. The
last 600 years, the Danes have been polluting our society and
our sense of self. And it all starts with independence. When
we start taking care of ourselves and proving our existence,
that’s when we become a confident nation, that’s my opin-
ion. What Iceland did when you got your independence; that’s
what every country needs to do. Declare independence.”
BOYS
in A BAnD
KiCK-aSS rOCK ‘n’ rOLL
wOrDS bY HAukuR S. MAGNúSSON
I FIRST SAW BOYS
IN A BAND PER-
FORM AT A DINGY
STUDENT BAR AT THE SPOT FESTIVAL IN ÅARHUS,
DENMARK, IN THE SPRING OF 2007. THEIR ON-
STAGE ENTHUSIASM AND CATCHY SONGS KICKED
MY ASS, AND I BECAME AN INSTANT FAN OF THIS
INSANELY BADLY NAMED FAROESE BAND.
Reykjavík Art Museum 22:15, tonight
inTER
ViEWS