Sir Richard Bishop

Sir Richard Bishop – While My Guitar Violently Bleeds

The investigation of folk music in all its worldly forms didn’t begin with John Fahey, but his guitar workings – rampant with un-Western like chord structures and his intense aural survey of a guitar’s acoustical limits - still find new devotees today. Existing between this departed wizard and the recently emerged freak-folk scene is an equally vivid crew of elder guitar dazzlers: Jack Rose, Stephen Basho-Junghans, and Sir Richard Bishop. As the shortest piece (just under seven minutes) of the trio of tracks, “Zurvan” is a Flamenco influenced by the cinematic theatrics of a spaghetti Western; full of flashy runs and precise fingerpicking, like a skilled gunslinger’s showboating his hip cannons. “Smashana” is vigorously avant-garde. If ever the world heard the recorded exorcism of a be-deviled instrument, here lies its evidence: a darkly arranged composition haunted with stabs of feedback and ghoulish tonal moans. The record closes with a 22 minute Middle Eastern raga, as trance inducing as turkey on a Sunday.