Sir Richard Bishop :: Hillbilly Erotica
Cover Art: Mike Mang
Photo: Uwe Faltermeier
A feverish follow-up to last year’s “Hillbilly Ragas,” Sun City Girls’ Richard Bishop quickly returns from the soft spiritual soil where he’s been planting splintered seeds from his critically cosmic catalogue with an esoteric extension in the series titled “Hillbilly Erotica.” A deeply rich and overwhelmingly comprehensive collection of songs, 7/8ths improvised, except for the track “Postcoital Serenade,” which was iconically improvised in all its entirety, and 1/8 composed on one guitar, with no overdubs, the album’s alchemical atmosphere breathes an eager enlightenment into this battered world with sonic surprises around every concrete corner. All you have to do is press your cauliflower ear up close enough to the damp drywall to hear the meditative murmurs and gestures from ghosts that have long since passed through the melodic mist. Radically rooted in a southern sound bath, while simultaneously capturing the deranged DNA of specified regions across the United States and beyond, Bishop takes listeners through back roads and back alleys of some of the more scenic routes to the soul’s complicated chamber. Where Ragas left off, Erotica rides shotgun with a shotgun in the driver’s seat, gripping the rubber wheel of a cherry red Studebaker E-series on a warm night in the middle of Enville in search of an ancient UFO crash site that only Bishop knows the complicated coordinates to. You can see the silvery smoke in the distance, curling like a fresh cinnamon roll under the murderer’s moon, just before the cedar clearing takes up the rest of the view through the truck’s cab window.
“…still exploring the areas around these parts with a similar type of aggression [as Hillbilly Ragas], but as morning light approaches, a clearing or two present themselves, with hills and valleys viewable in the distance, inspiring a slightly different sonic landscape. One could be forgiven for feeling a sense of relief from finally arriving from out of the nighttime woods to a place which may seem less threatening in the daylight, but it’s a trap - the darkness of night is always right around the corner. Enjoy the postcoital smoke, but tread carefully!”
While preserved in an acidic amber, Bishop cracks up nature’s candy to reveal a sonic signature with the American Primitive, where the sleeping spirits of Fahey, Basho, and most certainly Reinhardt have been well kept in the calcified casing. The intense and at times intimate instrumentation lurking within “Hillbilly Erotica” is simply fantastic, as each song wields its own magic through the harmonious hallways of Bishop’s personal library on subjects that eagerly expand the mind and the heart in the most fantastically fundamental way. Featuring tracks such as “Hookers Bend,” “Sweet Lips Spiritual,” the album’s ovulating opener “Lick Skillet,” and of course, “Finger, Tennessee,” Bishop breaks the soothing silence with his acoustic alchemy by never uttering a single word, even with some syllables standing the test of time as spiritual sighs into the weird winds of the world. Set for release on the beloved Drag City July 31st, “Hillbilly Erotica” would be a favorite within the hive mind of Lester Flatt if he had dropped acid, and driven a cherry red Studebaker E-series on a warm night in the middle of Enville with no hands, topping a whopping speed of 55 miles an hour. You can picture the grin on his face now.
https://linktr.ee/sirrichardbishop_scg
https://sirrichardbishop.bandcamp.com/album/hillbilly-erotica
