Guy Buttery came on about 7:40. No support act. He launched straight into his set with a very rhythmic, fast-paced piece.
He was playing an unusual Martin. OM sized body with a cutaway and what looked like a cedar top (unusual for a Martin) and sapele back and sides. Very plain in terms of decoration except for an MOP rosette.
During that first number there was a strange effect on his bottom strings, they sounded almost bowed with a slightly slow attack and long decay. I looked for pedals but there was only a loop station on the floor. At the end of the song he asked the sound guy to make some adjustments including getting rid of the reverb. That was the least we heard of that effect.
His loop station work was very clever. Making good use of a feature that allows you to build layers and then erase or undo just the last layer you put down.
He's no tradtionalist, bringing an ebow into the mix as well. At one point he built up a fairly spacey loop with the aid of the ebow, then put the guitar down and started playing a saw.
Two guitars on stage – a Martin and a Takamine. No sign of the Fylde that he mentions on his web site, He's supposed to have an endorsement with them. The only stomp box was a loop station – one of the two pedal variants (Metallic blue. Digitech?), the guitars, it turned out, had on board tuners. The Takamine also seemed to have on board effects. He occasionally pushed buttons on that guitar during a piece and at one time turned on a tremolo effect (without stomping on a box). This seemed to be the main reason for using the Takamine – he was playing the Martin most of the time.
The audience was mostly quitely respectful and nerdy. Maybe this led him into more reflective territory or maybe this is just the way he balances a set. There's no reason why somebody with Buttery's chops should be ashamed of them, but mostly he used them to get the tunes across rather than just using the tunes as pegs to hang his chops on. Overall I thought he balanced things quite well.
Sometimes chops are handy to camouflage a weak composition, sometimes egregious deployment of chops detracts from a strong composition. Early on he played a piece titled “7 inch post card”. A beautiful peace with a tranquil, reflective quality to it. He mostly slowed down on this one and let the composition speak for itself. This piece comes from his most recent album,
Fox Hill Lane, which represented a big jump forward for him in terms of composition.
There was a moment of surprise when it seemed that he'd just really got his mojo working and then announced that he was about to do his last number.
What? Barely 45 minutes. Should I feel swindled, or should I just be grateful for the greater generosity, in terms of time, that I'd experienced from other players? It wasn't like we were all kids who were champing at the bit to get clubbing either. He stretched the last piece out a bit, and then came back for an encore, but the whole thing was done safely under an hour.
Still, home in time to catch the end of some weird movie about assassins in Russia, a glass of whiskey and some reflection.
Buttery is operating in quite crowded territory. There's lots of acoustic whiz kids around at the moment, even in this country. It's hard to stand out just in terms of technique, so you have to find some unique elements of style, imagination or composition in order to carve out your own niche and brand. I think Buttery is headed in a profitable direction. I saw him in Jo'burg about 4 years ago, in a tiny little venue (a record bar actually) in Melville. This time around I didn't notice a major boost in his chops (which were jaw dropping the first time I saw him) but the compositional side of things is getting richer. He took some chances with improvised pieces – which is a risky proposition. Pure improvisation can end up sounding like wild geese honking, but hats off to him for taking the chance and mostly he didn't stray into “my chops are THIS big” territory but kept it interesting.
Guy Buttery is a very interesting, technically strong player carving out a niche for himself in what is quite crowded musical territory. His last album marked a big step forward in terms of compositions and showed that he's not going to get too easily stuck in a box. Despite my earlier comments I think the length of the show is satisfactory as it means that he can go for some intensity without burning the audience out and for some chops without the proceedings becoming a wankfest.
Check him out if he comes your way.
Is he coming your way? See
http://www.guybuttery.co.za/gigs
