Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport: An Unreview

Fuck Buttons’ latest album, “Tarot Sport” is due out 15th October after leaking last month. All of the reviews that I have read so far have had to resort to inventing ridiculous superlatives in a futile effort to describe this indescribable record. However, there is some sort of debate as to whether “Tarot Sport” is more pop than avant-garde. The Quietus proclaimed it as a masterpiece of experimentalism, The Times couldn’t have been more emphatically behind its searching and confusing sounds, but the NME, contentious as always, maintained that the record was “more pop than avant-garde”.

Having had the pleasure of “Tarot Sport” rearranging my room, via incredibly dense soundscapes and excessive sub woofer use, for over a week now, I can only agree with these publications in as far as emphasising how vital Fuck Buttons’ latest is. As for the nature of the album, as is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle ground. The fact is that the record’s secret lies in its successful synthesis of both reckless avant-garde experimentalism and carefree pop hooks, delivered in a way nobody has ever experienced before.

As I mentioned before, I don’t think that any journalist can really do this record justice. Not just because it’s so good, but because it’s such an unexplored form of music. Those who try either come out not having explained anything, or resort to belittling themselves by gushing insanely portentous sentences. How is it possible to describe white noise? By its very nature it is close to being nothing, yet it is its subtlety that lends it effectiveness; and language is such a more clumsy and imprecise practice that it could never do “Tarot Sport” justice.

I hope that this is the longest ever “unreview” of “Tarot Sport” that you ever have to read, and that the respect that I’m giving the record by not even attempting to describe it will be far more successful in persuading you to lend the record some of your life than by concocting a succession of elaborate and complicated sentences. Who knows, maybe it will catch on?

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