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Richard Bishop, guitarist and founding member of the band Sun City Girls (1981-2007), released his first solo record (Salvador Kali) in 1998 on John Fahey's esteemed Revenant label under the moniker Sir Richard Bishop.Since then he has released albums on a variety of labels: Polytheistic Fragments, The Freak of Araby, Tangier Sessions, and Oneiric Formulary (Drag City);Improvika, Elektronika Demonika, and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust Music);Fingering the Devil (Southern Records, UK);Hypostasis: A Work in Three Parts (VDSQ);Intermezzo (Editions Mego);The Unrock Tapes and Road to Siam (Unrock), and many others.His music combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that's nearly unrivaled among today's guitarists.Bishop strums spirituals with incantatory ragas, free-folk excursions, crystalline flamenco flourishes, ruddy Appalachian folk, Middle Eastern-tinged fantasias and gypsy arabesques.This is eclecticism done with respect and third-eye-dilating filigree;his compositions achieve a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.