The wait for a follow-up to Tarot Sport is over. Benjamin John Power of the Fuck Buttons under the pseudonym of Blanck Mass has made atmospheric music that inspire stories and land masses that you assemble in your head. In a 10 song cycle, you will be taken across a series of sound crafted plains that might resemble something out of Baraka or trigger flashbacks from your epic-trance-loving raver days.
“Sifted Gold” takes you on the beginning of your aural journey with the sounds of running water, humming synthesizers that invite the adventure ahead. “Sundowner” blends in a transition with kinetic loops of chugging guitar buzzings, marking the next phase equipped with sparkling keys and gritty distortion effects grumbling amid washes of keyboards. The solemn beauty of “Chernobyl” plays like an audio memoriam to victims of the world's worst man made disaster scored in ambient slow-motion. These types of events seem to be on Mr. Power's mind, like the single “Land Disasters” that blasts with perfect distortion and bright synth layering that could have been an outtake from Mogwai's recent Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will record. This should come as no surprise, given that Mass has signed on to Mogwai's Rock Action label where all artists involved seemed to be involved in the meticulous craft of creating gorgeous sound plains rising from pulsing buzzsaw guitar hymns.
The conventional pop structuralist could pass off Blanck Mass as indulging in the vacant hedonism of loft party electro. What is overlooked through that perspective is the work of sheer electric inspred beauty. Seeing that the world of Eno and Warp Records have collided with his albums Small Craft On A Milk Sea and the recent Drums Between The Bells; Blanck Mass too stands at that generational gulf of contemporary ambient electro adventurism.
With still great affinity for the Andrew Weatherall produced Tarot Sport, this is the Fuck Buttons album I have wanted to hear since Street Horrrsing. One cannot help but wonder what fellow F. Button Andrew Hung is up to these days and what else we can expect from him, Blanck Mass or what treats the next Fuck Buttons album from the future will bring. This self-titled is as close as we will get to that answer for now.
