Suoni Per Il Popolo – Fuck Buttons and Young Magic at Sala Rossa

Young Magic and Fuck Buttons
La Sala Rossa Tuesday, June 15th 2014

Outside, the rain gushed without apology. Luckily, opening band Young Magic’s fiery set warmed up the crowd in La Sala Rossa, supplying the initial heat for an otherwise dreary Tuesday evening.

Melati Malay looked simply ethereal, clad in a white jump suit that married perfectly with Young Magic’s visual display. Images of cresting waves, cloudbursts, serene landscapes, and Indo-inspired scenery cascaded across her as she mellifluously serenaded the crowd. The three-piece included Malay, Isaac Emmanuel and their touring percussionist Daniel Alejandro Siles Mendoza. Playing several songs from their debut album Melt, they tumbled and swayed through each track perfectly in-sync with one another. Most notably, both “Slip Time” and “Sparkly” enraptured the crowd into a silent stare of complete euphoria.

Malay harmonized with both Emmanuel and the instruments alike, her vocals adding a graceful depth to their immersive, washed out, dream pop sound. Closing their set with their most popular single “Night in the Ocean,” Young Magic quietly thanked the crowd and sauntered offstage as sanguine as they had first appeared.

By the time Fuck Buttons hit the stage, the crowd had doubled in both volume and water weight. They opened without introduction, launching headfirst into a visual and melodic kaleidoscope. Ander Hung and Benjamin John Power faced each other, an array of meticulously displayed gear separating the two. Behind them, their silhouettes appeared as part of their visuals, their bodies like monoliths: monochromatic, menacing and phantom-like, danced alongside the geometric shapes, gradients, and colourful patterns.

Both Hung and Power wore stern glares during the entirety of their set, concentrating all their attention on the fastidious details of their live show. Opening with “Brainfreeze,” each track began simply enough, slowly building upon its base layers to tower over, envelop and finally embrace the crowd in a wave of sound and vision. Power was most impressive in his use of a talk-box; mouthing unintelligible vocals from a microphone placed directly in his mouth, he crafted introspective industrial noises that mimicked a demolition. Rushes of adrenaline were felt from the crowd, most notably during tracks from their most recent album Slow Focus. Sentients’ introduction waned before erupting into the equivalent of a melodic apocalypse: harsh and haphazard yet beautiful in its overwhelming confusion. Leading straight into “The Red Wing,” screams wailed in every direction as bodies galloped toward the stage.

Fuck Buttons’ live show warps time and space; one cannot distinguish whether they are coming or going. Confining the listener at each moment, their music creates a world of possibilities within every singular moment. Their encore was the dazzling track “Sweet Love for Planet Earth”. It flickered and trembled, fluctuating between hot and cold, hard and soft, to lull the drone-like-crowd back out into the rain.