On “Sweet Love For Planet Earth,” Fuck Buttons created the sort of first-album first-track monster that could drive any outfit into an early grave. Born to soundtrack Hollywood previews and backyard bong sessions alike, the track proved immediately ubiquitous and divisive, sounding something like Prurient and Air at once. Primal Scream producer Andrew Weatherall’s remix imbued a sweet-natured danciness to it, resulting in a union of pop, dance and noise so successful that the duo invited him to produce the entire follow-up, the new Tarot Sport. The resulting album is a big, sinuous thing, equal parts Lindstrom and Mogwai. Benjamin Power emailed URB to discuss its creation.
How did you get hooked up with Andrew Weatherall? Had the idea to move in his direction been around before the remix of “Sweet Love For Planet Earth”?
[Benjamin] Yeah like you say, after hearing the fantastic job that Weatherall did on the remix of “Sweet love” we realised that Andrew had a very clear idea of what we are trying to get across and displayed a certain sensitivity to the components within our music. Andrew did a fantastic job and we’re all very happy to have worked together.
How important was he in the production of the record’s final sound?
[Benjamin] Everything was written and constructed before we went down into the studio with Andrew. The actual recording process only actually took us a few days. The following three weeks was spent embellishing the sounds that were already there and the mixing.
Was there anything about the first record you were looking to improve upon or replicate?
[Benjamin] It definitely wasn’t our intention to replicate anything about the first record on Tarot Sport, but that doesn’t mean to say when we were writing material for Tarot Sport that we had a particular “gameplan.” All we knew was that we didn’t want to make the same record again. The songwriting process for us has always been one of intense exploration. We never step into a writing session with a clear vision of what the outcome will be. That way when we explore the sounds we can extract from all our equipment we often surprise ourselves, which is a great thing to still be able to do.
What did you set into the studio looking to make? Was there a central sonic idea you were trying to explore?
[Benjamin] We wanted to document where our heads are at right now.
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