Guy Buttery’s ‘Orchestrations’ is a musical meditation

It’s easy to fall into a trance when you turn this album up, and dress yourself in its embrace. And while each track is different, there’s a journey in Guy Buttery’s Orchestrations that, when you close your eyes, takes you into your own world of introspection. It’s musical meditation, but it’s also release. Breathing. Cause it took 12 years to get here.

Discover nuance on each listen

Orchestrations is an album you will never tire of, because on each listen, you discover new nuance.

It began in a somewhat terrifying moment. In 2012, Buttery found himself standing on stage with the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra. There were 52 musicians.

“Before that, the biggest group I’d worked with was a four-piece band,” he said. “Being in front of an orchestra was daunting. But it was also the beginning of something completely new.”

That something new became Orchestrations, an album unlike anything he had made before. From the first rehearsal, Buttery said he could feel the music shape shifting. His solo acoustic guitar compositions were suddenly transformed, given wings and expanse, reinterpreted through layers of orchestral texture.

“There were so many more sounds, more octaves, more dynamics to work with,” he said. “It opened up this huge creative space.”

Unfolding in its own time

But rather than rush the recordings to completion, Buttery let it unfold in its own time. Life intervened. Other projects came and went. But Orchestrations kept calling him back. “I always knew there was some magic there,” he said. “Even when it felt like it had run its course, another arts council would reach out, or a collaborator would pop up, and the project would resurrect itself.”

From 2012 to 2024, a cycle of burial and rebirth repeated itself more times than he can count. It became part of a creative rhythm, he said.

“It took longer than I thought it would,” he said. “But maybe it needed that time. Some things do.”

Buttery has been performing professionally since the late 1990s.

“I’m an acoustic guitar player, amongst other things,” he said. “Composer, producer, engineer. It depends on the day.”

He started playing music at 10. He’s released more albums than he can name off-hand. His approach has always been about musical exploration, and Orchestrations is a prime example of what he can achieve and has.

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Guest muso’s from 10 countries

The album features 19 guest musicians from 10 countries, among them Zimbabwean guitar legend Louis Mhlanga, New York’s Kaki King, Swiss percussionist Julian Sartorius, and Indian classical instrumentalists who bring a meditative drone to parts of the record.

“It’s not just an orchestral album,” Buttery said. “And it’s not just a guitar album. It sits somewhere else entirely.

“And while many moments feel musically huge, there’s an intimacy too. This is evident on the opening track; it is entirely based on two repeating chords.

“There’s something incredibly hypnotic about two chords,” he said. “More so than one. More than three. It’s like an oscillation, a trance. The beginning of that track feels like the tuning up of an orchestra. It’s a liminal space, between dreaming and waking.”

The bass clarinet has such gravitas

“I just fell in love with the bass clarinet during the recordings,” he said. “I kept asking how we could get more of it into the record. It has such gravitas, such warmth. I couldn’t get enough.”

Orchestrations was mixed in Dolby Atmos, a spatial audio format that allowed for 12 different points of audio placement. “It’s not a stereo record,” Buttery said. “It’s meant to be immersive. We were thinking about psycho-acoustics, about how sound moves around you. You’ll hear something new on every listen.”

It’s an incredible set of music. You can call it a musical reckoning because that’s where it takes you and brings you back. Some people have described his work as evoking geological layers, or roots deep beneath a forest. Buttery kind of agreed with that.

“I live quite closely with the land,” he said. “I’m based on a remote farm in KZN. I think a lot of that seeps into the music. Probably through osmosis. It’s not something I plan, but it comes out.”

Some fans and music critics have gone as far as calling Orchestrations his magnum opus.

“What does magnum opus mean? Does that mean greatest work ever made? I don’t know. Who knows? It probably is,” he said. “At least in terms of time, scope, and effort. But I don’t feel pressure from that. My last record was made in three hours in New Delhi. The next one might be a cassette-only release. I go where the music takes me.”

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