I went to DC9 last Wednesday on a bit of a lark to see Fuck Buttons. I had seen them before, about a year ago, opening for Mogwai, and thought their music was pretty great, and had downloaded a copy of their album Street Horrrsing which was also pretty good. But it isn’t like they really do anything that you can watch, other than turn knobs and stuff, so I didn’t really need to see them live again. But anyhow I ended up enjoying it.

It was a pretty sizable crowd for a Wednesday night — amazing what a little Pitchfork hype will do. A friend and I rolled upstairs in time to catch most of Growing, the openers. I’d heard them a little before but didn’t have a strong impression about them in advance; they turned out to be awesome live. I was pretty impressed, it was a great performance of sort-of electronic noise music with some live instrumentation and even bursts of vocals. It was like a band performing at the coolest house party you could ever imagine, with beautiful strangers dancing all night. Like rave music, but much better. But the crowd at DC9 seemed strangely unmoved. I could hardly restrain myself from dancing and I am not the dancing kind… I am not sure what was up with all the young hipsters who weren’t up for shakin’ it.

I went ahead and bought a CD by Growing but wasn’t very impressed by it (bland ambient techno stuff). Still, I’d check them out again sometime, especially somewhere a little more club and a little less rock. Maybe I can hire them to perform and dj when I am a socialite having crazy hip parties someday…

Here’s a flickr photo of Growing by Mehan Jayasuriya:

The crowd seemed more enthused for Fuck Buttons, and the “performance” was pretty good. They are an interesting band and were worth the price of admission. I find their brand of music impressive but, again, there isn’t really anything to watch. That’s cool… I am just glad to see loud noise getting some respect. When I have my doubts about the state of (underground) pop music in 2009, I just have to remind myself that a duo named Fuck Buttons can draw a large crowd to listen to experimental electronica.

Check this out — you can download basically the whole performance that night from the excellent website disclosed mp3! Rad!

And here is another photo stolen from Jayasuriya, in case you want to see what these guys look like: