Music 10K: 65. Tarot Sport

Tarot Sport by Fuck Buttons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay, I really didn't forget about this blog. So many things have been happening for me that I've just become swamped.

Nonetheless, here's a great duo that takes music to the far-out reaches of space and time.

Starting off with "Surf Solar", this music dials in on some swirling, screechy electronics with some hefty bass and a glitchy, walkie-talkie-like riff. Then comes the somber synth with its almost religious electric organ seriousness.

An entirely instrumental album with lengthy tracks that are more than double the length of standard pieces, Tarot Sport takes you to another world - perhaps a CGI created world with abstract geometric shapes, alien mechanical devices, and atmospheric lens flares. Each song is a kaleidoscopic configuration that bounces with color, mood, movement, and life.

"Rough Steez" starts off with heavy droning as if a dozen or so futuristic vehicles are revving up to race. Then come the sliding pitches of dissonant synths and a pulsing underlying bass synth melodically providing a foundation for the song. More earthy and vibrating with energy, we're on the planet on this one. You can see the cliffs in the distance. Maybe a squad of marching robots too.

I really really like "Lisbon Maru". It's probably one of the more melodic tracks on this album. It has a powerful rhythm that taps into something tribal, but not exactly in the traditional sense. It's a song that evokes traveling and movement somewhere between earth and sky. The sounds in all Fuck Buttons' tracks are immense and epically enveloping.

As one track blends into another, we find ourselves at "Olympians". It sings with an oscillating, high-pitched tweaked synth and gentler pipe-organ synths carrying a melody that takes you to church in the year 3000. Coupled with what sounds like digitally manipulated Peruvian panpipes that whistle gorgeously and spaciously before a panoramic vista of what I would guess to be something like a natural wonder out of this world, at a near 11 minutes, this song is big big big.

"Phantom Limb" is a pinball machine gone nuts. Obviously, it no longer works, or it works in ways too erratic and counterintuitive to discern. Everything oscillates in this song simultaneously. Some of it sounds drowned, choked, swirling down a drain and spewing vitriolic fluids all at once. Oddly, midway through the song, it lightens up with a single pulsing synth and faint human vocalizations.

At "Space Mountain", we come back to signature Fuck Buttons territory, very much like "Surf Solar." Glassy, crystalline synths at the beginning make this my favorite track. It's like flying over a city made of crystals scintillating in the sun and throwing prismatic rainbows over everything. The electric guitar is a nice touch of instrumentation to an otherwise entirely synthesized and electronically rendered piece.

At last, the album ties off with "Flight of the Feathered Serpent". Fantastic drums in this one. Some of the best ever. Avatar anyone?

Terrific album. Gloriously original, moving, spacious, open, joyous, and uplifting.