Bishop, Sir Richard

Bishop, Sir Richard

Saginaw Racket

Unrock

***Saginaw Racket, the new double album by Sir Richard Bishop, features the first new recordings from the former Sun City Girls guitarist in over five years. It is a singular work for electric guitar in four parts with each part being a full side. Each of the four parts were recorded in one take and they are presented in the order they were originally recorded. But this is also a circular work with no fixed beginning or end. One can start the record with any of the four sides, with the remaining sides then played in order. Known for his interpretations of Spanish, North African, Middle and Far Eastern guitar and string compositions, Richard Bishop never remains long in any one musical territory. There are no Eastern or exotic touches here. It is more reminiscent of early '70s underground rock (unrock). The entire work is improvised, with recurring motifs and melodies. It is similar in approach to Neil Young 's Dead Man Soundtrack, but Saginaw Racket is louder, more energetic and more complex, while retaining its cinematic quality. The tone of the guitar is the voice of the record. It is noisy at times but it is not "noise." It definitely is a racket, though, and it unleashes all the pent-up energy of the last few years, during much of which, SRB never even picked up a guitar. So in a sense Richard Bishop is returning to his roots in the form of a spontaneous soundtrack to old Saginaw where...

Bishop, Sir Richard

Oneiric Formulary

Drag City

***Five years after Tangier Sessions, SIR RICHARD BISHOP, we presume, is back from his travels around the world. With Oneiric Formulary, he’s dug deeper into his bag of extra-musical gestures from the eternal and unknowable, along with a few sounds we might recognize, all transmuted for our mortal ears’ enjoyment. The last couple of Sir Richard Bishop releases on Drag City were genre exercises of sorts—The Freak of Araby explored the musical legacy of late Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid while Tangier Sessions explored the sound of an obscure 19th century guitar that Rick had acquired from a mysterious Swiss luthier. The title Oneiric Formulary, may sit contrarily on the tongue—but we may refer to it as representing “a collection of dream states”—which means we like it! With such a lofty goal in mind and at his fingertips, Sir Rick returns to the approach of his DC debut, Polytheistic Fragments—a different sound, a different instrument, for nearly every track, drawing from the music of all nations, including and especially that infamous republic with only one person on the census roll (initials SRB).

Bishop, Sir Richard

Tangier Sessions

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. Armed with a newly purchased antique guitar of unknown origin, SIR RICHARD BISHOP spent a week in Tangier, Morocco wandering the city, drinking strong coffee and improvising on his new instrument. The tone of the guitar and Sir Richard’s gentle, loving touch with it hold forth from the first moment of Tangier Sessions, sitting clear and true in the home-recorded night air above the city. The album sequence is the precise order of the songs as they were conceived and recorded. Rick’s all over the neck in the early going while sorting through the dynamics of the instrument—in fact, guitarophiles, the first couple of songs feature Sir Richard Bishop playing without a plectrum for the first time ever! It was as if the songs were almost being written by the guitar itself... using, of course, all the available wide-ranging and maxi-cultural vocabulary resources unique to Sir Richard Bishop. Yet, even as change after change is visited upon and charged through, the progression is smoothly rendered, the guitar and hands playing it in agreement about where they are going.

Bishop, Sir Richard

Solo Acoustic Vol. 8

Vin Du Select Qualitite

***SUN CITY GIRLS’ master guitarist, in 20,000 leagues of his own.