Compact Disc

Price: $20.00

Sir Richard Bishop: Improvika

(Locust, 2004)

By trade Sir Richard Bishop is a dealer of rare occult books and fine paper ephemera. For many in the musical cosmos, he has occasion to travel the smoke-filled carnie circuit as 1/3 of the Sun City Girls medicine show. But in the twilight hours of a shadow world sensed only by few, Bishop is a dazzling unaccompanied guitarist.

On Improvika, Bishop rides a very tall horse through a surrealist's cowboy set that's 1 part bruit Peckinpah muscularity & 2 parts illuminated Jodorowskian symbolism. A very strange place, indeed. Armed only with a single steel string wooden guitar, bare-knuckled Bishop fends off the horrors & dangers of the night with ease as he spits out glorious white robed arabesques, Django inspired gypsy arcs, & latin terracotta flourishes like so many spinning tumbleweeds in a one horse town that is his alone. Improvika is Sir Richard's follow up to his part on Locust's celebrated Wooden Guitar collection and second full length release after his debut on John Fahey's Revenant label.