Sir Richard Bishop returns for a new spontaneous six-string meshing of people’s music, recollections and psychic intentions. Are y’all ready for some Hillbilly Erotica?

Migration from last album’s Ragas to this new Erotica is another chapter in Bishop’s progress, drifting via songs into the further frontiers of his pappy’s hometown sounds, trancing over and out in their hand-me-down clothes. As with the ragas, the ‘rotica’s hung round the neck of John Fahey’s infamous dubbing of certain traditional American folk sounds as “American Primitive.” A perfectly good thought, but Sir Richard picks his own axe and chose a separate path. Rushing through gutters & picking pickled brains in the saucy headwaters of the down-low & literal American primitive, his hillbilly music is a mash of brined cultural inheritance, mini-ragas and moonshine-drunk savagery breaking out on the frets. As a conception for Sir Rick’s acoustic guitar music, it’s a dynamite means and frame, centering his improvisations in a place overflown with pagan desire and unbound in deliverance. Here he flies up and down the neck, his manner less pristine, yet more exquisite, a flailing, flowing-on-the-river medley through stubborn whitewater turbulence, post-grass and folk’s classical gas. Anybody who takes a snort of this here Hillbilly Erotica will find a frankly spellbinding richness of intent and execution in their ear-mouths. And may thereafter find brain and blightness. It’s fine!