As his 26 year involvement with the band Sun City Girls proved, Sir Richard Bishop is no stranger to freakier electric and eclectic material but on this album we find the Portland-based artist in a different mood.
Here, he wields only a six-string guitar for a paired-back sound which is both un-plugged and un-dubbed. It’s a back to basics approach that harks back to his first solo record, 'Salvador Kali', released on John Fahey’s Revenant Records label in 1998.
Titles like They Shall Take Up Serpents and Buzzard's Curse have a menacing ring to them but the emphasis is on following warm rhythmic excursions rather than sinister trails.
Bishop’s imagined hillbilly listener is not some redneck simpleton but a lonesome mountain man hidden in his own private backwoods; a figure with little or no knowledge traditional music.
Over the course of 38 minutes and nine splendid instrumental tracks Sir Richard delivers further proof that ‘primitive’ guitar is not a simple concept but one that is practiced well only by the most accomplished of fingerpickers.