Such a lovely, hazy mystical thing.________________
Recorded in London in July of 2005 at Southern Studios. Nine tracks of solo acoustic guitar, mostly improvised. An exploration into the shadow worlds of the Sub-Continent, North Africa, and other points on the Gypsy Trail.
Sir Richard Bishop is perhaps better known for the part he plays as one third of radical feral punk-noise collective Sun City Girls. Out of this band's intense unruly free jams grew Bishop's love for solo improvisation, which along with his appreciation for global folk musics largely shapes his solo work.
In 1998, Bishop released his first solo album--the beatific Salvador Kali--on John Fahey's Revenant label. Containing pieces for solo guitar and piano. 2004 saw Bishop following up Kali with a contribution to Locust's Wooden Guitar collection, which also featured pieces from the kindred musicians of Steffen Basho-Junghans, Jack Rose, and Tetuzi Akiyama. Richard's next album, Improvika, featured an unaccompanied free-flowing Bishop on a steel-string wooden guitar. Nine songs of wonderful beauty, showing the vast influences that Sir Richard has picked up through his years of musical adventures with the Sun City Girls. Fingering the Devil is of the same genesis, incorporating numerous musical strains in his virtuoso guitar playing. Middle Eastern, Pan-Asian and North African to name a few. The Eastern mysticism of Robbie Basho and the freewheeling gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt can both be heard on Fingering The Devil, but you never lose sight of the man at the centre of this six-string mystical chaos, the one and only Sir Richard Bishop, by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen.
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