Talking about the music of Fuck Buttons is a little like trying to describe the light of the sun to a blind person. You can mention its properties, what it does to you physically, how it changes the world around you, but there will be no way to convey exactly how the light alters your mood, how it enriches a landscape, what it is to be dazzled by its brilliance. Light is a good metaphor for their sound also, their tones and drones and shimmers appearing and disappearing like the blaze of sunlight that plays hide and seek behind buildings and trees when viewed from a moving vehicle, or the bursting of rockets on November 5th. Or maybe a strobe light at a rave is the most apt comparison, since former acid house and techno king Andy Weatherall has taken the power duo under his wing as producer this time round.What could have been a vampiric annexation of the band’s sound into a clubby, dubby shuffle, ripe for bland, mainstream exploitation instead proves to be the extra push over the cliff the duo needed to make good on the promise of their savagely noisy and resolutely unfriendly debut disc Street Horrsing. Tarot Sport really is that rarest of things, a difficult second album that isn’t, one that opens up their sound into bright new meadows and sun-dappled valleys without entirely leaving the darkness of Street Horrsing’s haunted woods far behind. There’s a fresh new optimism and joy present here, but the kind that emerges from dark places squinting and blinking, the darkness still clinging to its coat.The pulsing, rave-y rhythms of the first album’s flagship single 'Bright Tomorrow' are the Rosetta stone to understanding the direction that the band have chosen on their new disc: but describing it as dance music (even *retch/gulp* ‘intelligent’ dance music) is reductive and inaccurate. The beats are much more of a leading presence here, sure, but the mess of blurred, harsh sound behind them is still an un-categorical swamp of noise. The focus has shifted slightly closer to ‘pop’, but nobody’s going to be covering 'Rough Steez' on the X Factor any time soon.The album opens in a glittering, shimmering confetti of synth, dotted with old-school 808 noises and overlaid with chattering, staccato vocal samples, like Boards of Canada’s 'Telephasic Workshop' played at the wrong speed. A minute or so into this meander through enchanting alien territory and the band’s signature wall of drone hits like a meteor, straight into your heart, before being overlaid by yet another layer of melody which sounds like the music Ennio Morricone would preface a spaghetti western showdown with. This is 'Surf Solar', Tarot Sport’s first single and by the end of its 10 minutes’ duration your heart is thudding and spasming like a dying fish. Second track 'Rough Steez', debuted on last year’s American tour, is a very different animal, clip-clopping in on what sounds like a flurry of hoof-beats on cobblestone, the stuttering synth line wheezing and oscillating drunkenly like a defective motor engine, shards of digital noise screeching and swooping like attacking birds. This is a genuine departure for Fuck Buttons, and a healthy signal that their sound is ripe for evolution when the ‘soaring majesty’ bit gets old.'The Lisbon Maru' is another step away from the familiar, and could be the band’s most melodic, unashamedly pretty construction to date. The harsh synth-stabs here anchor a spiraling, questing melody line which seems to echo off of ancient walls. It drifts hypnotically, like steam rising from white neon, until another patented drone-crescendo explodes over everything in a shower of sonic sparks, before the track resolves into a strident military drum tattoo. Perhaps the clipped, straight-backed drumming is linked to the sunken war ship that the track derives its name from, one of the most horrific and bloody episodes of WWII, a Japanese ship bombed into a watery grave complete with 800 Allied prisoners in Hong Kong Harbour. Knowing this helps explain the track’s poignancy, and underscores Fuck Buttons’ inability to party with complete, careless abandon. There’s a constant uneasiness at the edge of even their most up-beat numbers which lends them a gravitas that other young pups can only manufacture falsely.'Olympians', the album’s most unashamedly cheerful and triumphant number arrives on a loping, looped beat and features the return of the searing, one-note Gospel organ that the band borrowed off of mid-80s vintage Spacemen 3, and which was the backbone of many of Street Horrsing’s best tracks. Here, it provides the bedrock to a sparkling melody which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Vangelis or Jean Michel Jarre record. Indeed the title 'Olympians' seems to point explicitly to the track’s suitability for montages of ski-jumps at the Winter Olympics, or to slow motion shots of athletes running on a beach. You want me to say it? It’s their 'Chariots of Fire', a comparison they’d no doubt be perfectly happy with.Next big departure on the album is 'Phantom Limb', a close cousin of 'Rough Steez', but even wilder, even more deranged.. Clicking, clacking percussion struggles with guttural bass-notes, and frenzied, shrill noise that elasticates out and back, over and over. Midway through and in a brief dip in the madness we can perceive hesitant coughs and ‘huh’s, only the second evidence of the human voice on the record. It strikes you that Benjamin Power snarling like an exorcism into a Fisher Price mic, or Andrew Hung whooping and chattering like a Native American shaman in a trance were massive components of what made Street Horrsing one of the spookiest records of this decade, and the reigning-in of those vocal experiments leaves a slight but noticable hole in their sound: their sonic palette has gained immeasurably in confidence and crunchiness, but it’s taken a minor hit on the human front.No matter, because next up is another tower of triumphalism in 'Space Mountain'. A circular synth line, oddly reminiscent of a Wurlitzer organ, and gently echoing drum beats guide us into a track that initially sounds like a sombre cousin of 'Bright Tomorrow', with its tense, ascending organ figure. But the unexpected arrival of what sounds suspiciously like a squalling heavy metal guitar throws you off-guard once more and draws the track inexorably forward (or I guess ‘upward’ as per the title) into one of the most repetitive and trance-like tracks on the album.Hard to top that you’d think, but Fuck Buttons have thus far in their career made a habit out of plunging headlong into whatever comes next, and with no breathing space for a second we are galloping along with 'Flight of the Feathered Serpent', possibly the oldest track here ( I first saw them play it at their ICA headline gig nigh on 2 years ago), and if there’s any justice in the world, Christmas Number 1 this year. What a great world where that could happen...a textbook example of what they do brilliantly, it is, if anything, even more minimalist and majestic than 'Space Mountain'. It’s a pure ode to joy if ever there was one, epic in length and scope, a swooning, swooping ride over mountains and lakes, a simple descending keyboard riff urging us on at breakneck pace. Towards the end, grim, digital growls puncture the mood and a flurry of frenzied, almost Celtic-style drumming brings us home again, exhausted but exhilarated.For Fuck Buttons create nothing if not total body music. It’s music that vibrates in your teeth and tingles in the tips of your fingers. I know people who listen to Fuck Buttons on their work-out at the gym, but for me, listening to this record is a work-out in itself. Perhaps the Fuck Buttons of their name are the points in your brain which can be pushed, poked, fucked with, without a finger being laid on your body. This record is the best work-out I’ve had in months and I feel filled with light every time I listen to it. I’m not a religious man but I could easily evangalise for Fuck Buttons. Their light pours out of me.Fuck Buttons on MySpace