Review Summary: selling shit for christmas cake
Blanck Mass’ World Eater is almost entirely what you would expect to come from one half of F
uck Buttons – layers and layers of sound, altogether strident and gorgeous, superlatively rewarding in the breadth of its crescendo. Raised in the same jagged caves as Tarot Sport and Slow Focus, its form of combat is almost feral. It exudes a boldness. It lives to conquer. Its album art is a macro of a dog’s gnarled, bared teeth. And here is Realisationship, from the other half of F
uck Buttons, with a knitted portrait of Andrew Hung.
It transpires, though, that Realisationship does also serve to be bold. Hung’s decision to sing on this album, be it to its detriment or otherwise, was not an easy one for him to make. His voice is clumsy, and it falters and fails, but by those virtues it’s also – actually – completely riveting. He combines it, quite cleverly, with production that at first sounds slipshod but reveals itself to be rich and calculated – hawkish synth lines become rounded by thick drumbeats and flitters of guitar, and little aural oddities reveal themselves and fluff the album out like Polyfilla.
It’s a victory for the head-inhibitor, when tracks like ‘Private Commercial’ can bravely belt out “Walking in the park, I feel like such a f
ucking fool” and “I’m like a nervous racehorse”, whilst still carrying itself with its chin pointed decidedly forward. On ‘Elbow’, frivolous, primitive melodies explode with glee as Hung jilts a boring friend/lover, almost braggadocious with his newfound confidence. Even the bared-teeth bravado of World Eater is kind of channeled with ‘Animal’, with the aplomb steered into darker territories, a mounting post-punk congress of angry synths and caustic guitar enveloping Hung’s vessel-busting, tryhard shouts and snarls.
It was never going to turn heads in the same way as Blanck Mass has, but Realisationship excels for its faults. And it doesn’t particularly matter if its chest is puffed out, “Napoleon complex” adorning the badge it wears – all of the reasons why you shouldn’t like it are what make it peculiarly palatable. Midway through the record, Hung wails “even whispers break a silence, time and pressure make a diamond”. By the end, he’s crooning “can’t you see that I’m just trying to open your eyes." Just, please, give him some attention.
