Product Description 2013 release, the third full length from the British Electronic duo. Slow Focus is Fuck Buttons' first album since 2009's Tarot Sport. Once again abiding by their fundamental rule that 'we must always be in the same room when writing,' what Fuck Buttons have created on Slow Focus is something that feels more close-up than ever before, a first-person view through winding pathways set against a frequently aggressive and constantly evolving terrain. It's an ominously shimmering mirage that could only have come from their own volition. Review In the past, Fuck Buttons edits were a necessary evil, or at least an imperfect trade-off; yes, their tracks run ten minutes on average, but if you don't want to make that kind of time investment, do you deserve the thrill of those transcendent, Olympian builds? The lead single from their third LP, ''Slow Focus'', makes it a moot point, as ''The Red Wing'' is the first Fuck Buttons song we've heard where the beat drops immediately-- and it's the first Fuck Buttons song where the ''beat'' can be understood in a hip-hop sense of snares, kicks and hi-hats. On a Fuck Buttons track, even a rudimentary breakbeat can create an overwhelming, gravitational effect that aligns all of these disparate and playful ideas into a singular, driven juggernaut, as the duo mark ''The Red Wing'' with reverbed samples, untraceable arcade sound effects, and joyful, buzzsaw synth lines. While Fuck Buttons have been uncomfortably grouped in noise, rave and post-rock, there's always been a hip-hop approach in their intuitive and inventive reappropriation of cheap synths and scavenged sonic detritus. ''The Red Wing'' shows how Fuck Buttons interact with the concepts and ideas of their peers rather than just the mere music; as such, they are never in danger of sounding like anyone other than Fuck Buttons. ----Pitchfork, May 30, 20138.7 Best New Music On ''Slow Focus,'' their first album in four years, Fuck Buttons remain devoted to forbidding, elemental sensations, and their slow-moving pieces inspire the kinds of big feelings-- exhilaration, majesty, awe-- that double as reminders of our smallness. Listening to their progression, from 2008's ''Street Horrrsing' to now, you get the sense of tinkerers building obsessively retooled versions of the monolith from ''2001: A Space Odyssey,'' each bigger than the last. They got their start in the noise-rock community, but transcended that niche almost immediately, and their earliest material, some of featuring distorted, screaming vocals, sounds positively quaint in light of what followed. ''Tarot Sport'' was so much larger and more ambitious than their debut that it gave them an unlikely career as festival headliners, and a piece of the album (''Surf Solar'') snuck its way into Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. ''Slow Focus'' feels like a logical endpoint to their journey: ''Tarot Sport'' might have gotten them to the Olympics, but they've never sounded this, well, Olympian before. The difference is apparent from the opening seconds of the nine-minute ''Brainfreeze.'' The massive sounds we hear-- a warped synth figure being pounded into shapes by hammering drums and a pistoning rhythm track-- are lonelier and more remote than anything Fuck Buttons have made before. ''Tarot Sport,'' big as it was, gestured vaguely at human bodies, with airy, glittering sounds on ''Surf Solar'' evoking an outdoor festival or a rave. There are no human bodies left on ''Slow Focus,'' just open space and hard surfaces, and the sounds resound for miles in all directions. Power and Hung self-produced the record, and judging from the results, they should start producing for other acts as well. Every sound on ''Slow Focus'' is smooth, polished, and lovingly molded, like a factory-shaped piece of steel. The album's tone is a curious mix of juiced and muted, like Hung and Power have rewired the maximalism of stadium EDM to arrive at the minimalist emptiness of someone like Detroit's Robert Hood. This is perfectionist's music: Dr. Dre, who has been holed up for years vacuuming pathogens off of ''Detox'' like dead skin cells from a computer keyboard, might be chasing a sound like this-- deep and resonant and beautifully emptied-out. The seven tracks tend to move in simple, navigational arcs: Open widescreen on an empty vista, pull back even further. Midway through ''Brainfreeze'', the synths shift up an octave and widen outwa --Pitchfork, July 22, 2013''The best thing I've heard all year? Fuck Buttons. I love them. I'm So jealous." ----Jean Michel Jarre, Q, November, 2014