Guitarist Frank Butrey's Hard Driving "Malicious Delicious"

As I've said before, one nice thing about doing these blogs is that you get sent things that come out of left field, things you would never have known about otherwise. Philadelphia-based guitarist Frank Butrey's Malicious Delicious (Lust for Toys 01979 FRK) is that sort of surprise for me.

This is a scorching set of mostly electric, hard fused rock. He's playing with some crack cats and he is playing some very aggressively hip fusion. Nothing polite. He has chops but he's using them to express, not impress.

There is the kind of joy of playing going on that you found more in the early fuzed music sets than you are apt to find today--I mean the glad-to-be-here energy of early McLaughlin, Rypdal, Tony William's Lifetime, Santana in the astral zone, those early "this is new and we're psyched to do it" days.

The pieces have varying compositional feels. What's invariable is the quality of the guitar playing.

You dig guitarists cranking fuzed heat and cosmic cool, you should definitely NOT miss this one.