​Beauty in Decay: Fuck Buttons' Benjamin John Power Triumphs as Blanck Mass

"Loam," the opening track on Blanck Mass' upcoming Dumb Flesh, released May 12 on Sacred Bones Records, has the effect of lulling you into a false sense of comfort amidst its garbled swells of static. When "Dead Format" rudely smacks in immediately afterwards, the change in atmosphere is such a jolt to the senses that you'd be forgiven for forgetting that this challenging relationship between beauty and dystopia, playful and abrasive, is a hallmark of Benjamin John Power, best known as one half of electronic noise duo Fuck Buttons.

Blanck Mass' palate on Dumb Flesh is analogous to that of Fuck Buttons, but left to his own (increasingly analog) devices, Power's work veers towards the tenebrous. "I definitely prefer the darker side of dance music," Power tells THUMP. "You can find some kind of solace in hopelessness, especially if everyone's in the same boat. There's a union in that sense, especially in a club situation."

Power's thematic inspiration for the record is fittingly dark. "Dumb Flesh is based on decay and the fact that our bodies, a lot can go wrong with them," he says. "We're decaying from the get-go. That was the train of thought." With track titles like "Atrophies," "Lung," and "Detritus," the album may read as a morose affair, but it is emotively and sonically complex––Musical themes on the record allude similarities to everything from My Bloody Valentine to Depeche Mode to Mogwai and Gesaffelstein.

What separates Power from the ever-growing cabal of gloom-mongers in the post-EDM dance world, though, is a keen adherence to consonance. "I find melody to be the most engaging element in music," he says. "I have to at least have a suggestion of melody, otherwise I can't really get on with it…And narrative is really important when I'm doing these things. It's always present in any body of work I'm involved in. I don't wanna push a particular mental imagery onto anybody, but the ebb and the flow of an album should conjure up some sort of storyline."

The storyline of Dumb Flesh itself took more than one draft. Power wrote and rewrote the album all over the British Isles. It began in the Fuck Buttons rehearsal space, but when the duo moved out (and post-everything producer Arca moved in), Power crafted most of the record in the unlikeliest of places: "I made a lot of it in my mother-in-law's attic," he laughs. "That room had no windows. Then I moved to Edinburgh about six months ago. All three of those times, I completely re-shifted and reproduced it. It seems a huge task when you go back in and reinvent, but I'm glad I did because I've made the album I wanted to make."

That isn't to say Power hasn't made the albums he's wanted to with Fuck Buttons. "We're still together, but it's a different process," he explains. "I always experiment in a kind of naive fashion, not really knowing what's gonna happen with the equipment, until I stumble upon something that I like the sound of and build upon that. But working by myself can have its drawbacks as much as it is liberating. The decision-making is easier on the surface, but it's nice to have that other ear. Andy and I are so in tune musically. We come from very different musical backgrounds and have different interests, but we've really honed in our way of working so that it's almost like second nature to us. There's not really any pressure. Fuck Buttons is still a thing, we're gonna be writing soon."

Opening for Sigur Rós is one thing, playing All Tomorrow Parties another, but Power's unique and deep understanding of melody-in-noise has pushed his music to the most unlikely and grand of audiences––All 27 million viewers of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Blanck Mass' tune "Sundowner" was used as the main theme for the Summer Games, and it was as much of a surprise to Power as it was to anyone else.

"Rick Smith from Underworld got in contact about using some Fuck Buttons tracks. He was curating the music with Danny Boyle for the opening ceremony," Power explains. "I guess, through association, he must have come in contact with Blanck Mass. That was really quite an amazing moment. I went to Abbey Road and I saw the London Symphony Orchestra playing my track, a 60-strong string section, a 40-strong brass section. They had their sheet music and I was like, 'Wow. I just made this tune on my laptop.'"

"Any time there was a flag being carried or the olympic torch being carried, it was a Blanck Mass and the London Symphony Orchestra," Powers goes on. "My mum was like, 'All those times I told you not to name your band Fuck Buttons…Maybe it's not such a problem after all.'"

Unfortunately, parental reviews of Dumb Flesh have not been so glowing. "I haven't sent it to my mum yet," says Power. "I tried to play it to my dad, but I think he was a little preoccupied because there was a football game on."

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Purchase the album at Sacred Bones.

Jemayel Khawaja is Managing Editor of THUMP.