Visitations
Many Miles Music
Damon Buxton vexes me as a critic even while he delights me
as a listener on his latest album. Visitations.
The artist's musical gifts and talent, spread abundantly throughout the
recording, unveil themselves as richer and more complex with every playing (and
I have played the album well over ten times before writing this review), but it
is that same ten-plus playings that serves as evidence that something confounds
the usually adroit writer in me. Time after time I tried, as a critic, to draw
a bead on how to describe this man's music, but time and time again I was stuck
with how to convey, in my usual loquacious manner, what his music was
"like," so that you, the music-buying customer, would know whether it
would be to your liking. At this point in time, I have surrendered to that
goal, and will allow my critic to just sit back and enjoy the ride - and a
fascinating ride it is on Visitations.
Before delving into some detailed words on individual tracks
on the CD, I want to comment on the album artwork and the title. The two
beautiful women, draped in white, are, I assume, meant to convey visitations by
spirits (or at least that is my interpretation), yet the album liner notes are
devoid of overt spirituality or "new agey-ness" and the music
certainly doesn’t conjure images of angels or cosmic entities. I bring this up
mostly to encourage you, the potential buyer of the album, to look past these
images if they had prejudiced you to think this was going to be sweet, syrupy,
saccharine-laced music. The music on Visitations
is many things but is never syrupy or saccharine. With that said, let's look at
the music itself.
A perpendicular comparison could be made to Will Ackerman's
music, but that would be wrong because Buxton's music has more going on than
Ackerman's more tone-poem, impressionistic approach. After much soul-searching
the best phrase I can use to encapsulate Buxton's modus operandi is the
introduction of dramatic tension in his pieces. Allow me to quote from an
online source which describes it thusly: "Pleasurable excitement and
anticipation regarding an outcome, such as the ending of a mystery novel."
This is what I hear during the second track, "The Constancy of Angels (for
Ash)" especially when Buxton changes key two thirds of the way through the
track…there is a feeling of anticipation…of mystery…of unknowingness. It's so
deliciously anticipatory. The track perfectly captures the uniqueness of
Buxton's allure, the knowledge that something other than the usual may occur as
he unfurls his melodies which revolve around what I refer to as circular
refrains. "Rain" pleasantly assaults the listener with a cascading
fast tempo downpour of notes, played with such dexterity that you are left wishing
you could see Buxton play it live for the sheer joy of witnessing how his
fingers could deftly navigate the strings and frets so effortlessly. The
relative calm of "Sauternes" comes across as a delicious lull. The
piece is not just sedate but relatively serene in its quasi-Mediterranean
musings, like an aural aperitif. The title track features a wistful note
progression that is so ear pleasing you want to luxuriate in it, enjoying its
midtempo gracefulness, and then that "unexpected happens" when a series
of upper register notes appears as if to say "yes, but…"
"Transcontinental" conveys a sensation of travel with its tempo and
its melody, while the playfulness of "Lilia Lani" (sounding almost as
if it were played on a mandolin) speculates on a scene of unabashed frivolity.
"Maledictions" re-introduces that feeling of tension, of something
under the surface that seems to occupy a fair amount of Buxton's muse. It's not
darkness, or melancholy, nor anything particularly sinister, but instead the
"expectation" of the unknown. Call it "delicious
anticipation" if you will. However, there is no need to wait for the
payoff with Damon Buxton's guitar playing - the reward is right there in the
listening, the appreciation of the nuance, the timing, the attention to detail,
the juxtaposition of economy (few notes when called for) with a flurry of
frenetic spell-binding technique. By the time the listener reaches the end of
the "visitation" on the closing track, "Between These
Clouds," she or he will feel both sated yet also eager to further explore
the CD's fourteen tracks time and time again, peeking into each one's crannies,
seeking that moment when magic happens (e.g. 4:30 on "The Constancy of
Angels"); that instant when Buxton finds a musical "sixth gear"
and the listener suddenly experiences a flood of euphoria thinking "Oh
yes…that's it."
Damon Buxton is a rare, unique visionary on the acoustic
guitar. Visitations (meticulously
engineered, mixed and mastered by Corin Nelsen) is one of the best solo
acoustic guitar releases I've heard this decade, and I believe I
have yet to plumb its depths and find all it has to offer. It's a visionary
effort by a consummate artist.
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