Sir Richard Bishop, Hieronymus Harry @ Standard Time, Sunday

Sun City Girls guitar ace Sir Richard Bishop makes a rare Toronto appearance at 165 Geary Ave on Sunday at 8 pm. 

Burn Down The Capital presents...

SIR RICHARD BISHOP

HIERONYMUS HARRY

@ Standard Time (165 Geary Ave., 2nd Floor, Unit A, Toronto)

8pm, $20 Adv / $25 Door, All Ages. Get tickets here. 

SIR RICHARD BISHOP (https://sirrichardbishop.com)

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.

“Sir Richard Bishop forces one to alter that hoary cliche to ‘jack of all trades, master of…damn near all.’ Renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, Bishop has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that’s nearly unrivaled among today’s guitarists. Bishop strums spiritual 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 attain a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.” - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)

HIERONYMUS HARRY (https://hieronymusharry.bandcamp.com)

Hieronymus Harry invokes a time, place, and feeling that is strikingly different from our present moment. Hailing from Toronto, Harry’s music conjures madcap, mystical worlds through naturalistic acoustical performances. His debut album, “The River of Doom” is an odyssey of spellbound surrealist folk songs on embracing weirdness and the present self wholly. 

Check out Sir Richard Bishop in action followed by Hieronymus Harry's performance of "River Of Doom," the title track of his latest album. 

Rangda w/ Wyrd Visions, Sacred Lamp @ Double Double Land, Tuesday

Rangda's Ben Chasny, Chris Corsano and Richard Bishop have a new album they think you should hear. 

Ever since the trio of Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Ben Chasny (Plague Lounge, Badgerlore, August Born, Comets On Fire) and Chris Corsano (Jandek, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Björk)  banded together, the 'supergroup' handle has stuck in Rangda's collective craw. We only meant: "gee, what a super group!" But whatever, what's done is done – The Heretic's Bargain takes a nail gun to that idea's coffin, firmly reinforcing Rangda as a band with a shared intuition, instead of the sum of three separate parts.

After years of recording and touring together, Bishop and Chasny's guitar playing has mutated via some kind of lateral gene transfer of their musical DNA, and the rhythms ridden by Rangda feel mutually funded (though Corsano's beat-making is as fine-lined and rawly inspired as ever).

The Heretic's Bargain takes territories that Rangda explored on their first two albums - the abraded fury and free forms off False Flag and the serpentine Rang-dang-doodle songatechture from Formerly Extinct - and evolves them further into a grand unified development in music.

Lots of ground is covered, but it's all part of the same earth. Until you fall off the edge in the end. The Heretic's Bargain is out now on Drag City. Sharing the bill with Rangda at Double Double Land (209 Augusta) tonight will be Wyrd Visions and Sacred Lamp with DJ Dan Vila playing stuff he enjoys between sets while you text with your pals about the unseasonably warm weather. Watch the fab new video for Rangda's The Sin Eaters directed by Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers and The Brain Band infamy) who was not coincidentally in 200 Years and Basalt Fingers with Ben Chasny.  

Grails salute Bruno Nicolai

Some recent Grails converts who picked up their new album Deep Politics in advance of tonight's show with James Blackshaw at Sneaky Dee's might be surprised to hear Portland's instro-psych whumpers covering All The Colors Of The Dark, Bruno Nicolai's darkly twisted theme from Sergio Martino's 1972 satanic cult thriller Tutti i Colori del Buio. Have a listen:

A fondness for Italian film music isn't something new to Grails, it's actually a formative influence. You can hear the inspiration of Morricone all over their 2003 debut Burden Of Hope (Neurot) even if it wasn't explicitly stated.
As Alex John Hall and crew have slowly let go of the dream of being the new Sun City Girls, Grails have become considerably less self-conscious about openly paying tribute to the touchstone artists who helped shape their sound. While touring back in 2005, they were constantly listening to Gong's You: Radio Gnome Invisible, Pt. 3 and the Flower Travellin' Band's Satori albums on the road and they couldn't care less who knew it which led to their Interpretations Of Three Psychedelic Rock Songs From Around The World  (Latitudes) EP.

Increasingly indulging in yet more psych-damaged explorations on subsequent releases, the Grails returned to their appreciation for the gloomy goodness of Italian film scores – specifically of the giallo horror variety – with 2008's Doomsdayer's Holiday (Temporary Residence) and the proggy fourth installment of their Black Tar Prophecies series for Important from last year. It turns out, that was all just building up to the Grails crowning achievement, Deep Politics (Temporary Residence) which neatly ties up all of their disparate influences in one beautifully packaged coloured vinyl double LP set with an etched fourth side no less.

Deep Politics




I Led Three Lives