sir richard bishop: the freak of araby (drag city)

aaah, a slightly more sedate post today.  i’ll tone down the bombast and my (apparently) irritating verbosity in favour of a more compact, relaxed experience.

the bishop’s back, electric guitar plugged in, and all is good with the world.

indulging his lebanese roots, mixing the middle eastern with the american primitive with the gypsy flamenco with the morricone and django and bashing out in around thirty five minutes his most listenable and accessible record yet.  helped out by the ensemble on bass and percussion and somethingorother.

the musical stylings of egyptian-born guitarist and composer, omar khorshid (one of srb’s favourite guitarists), was apparently the big inspiration behind the freak of araby.  his tribute album for om kolthoum is pretty special.

the record features: a selection of covers, some of songs khorshid performed himself such as ka’an azzaman (which itself is an old lebanese song) and solenzara, which the sun city girls were known to play live.

and a selection of arabic inspired workouts from sir richard’s own nimble fingers such as barbary and taqasim for omar was an studio improv and (as you guessed) dedicated to omar khorshid. 

that you’d struggle to separate the originals from the covers is simply another testament to the mans genius and the strength of the album.

it’s a less frenzied effort than some of his other solo recordings.  not simple (i’m pretty sure it’s anything but).  certainly more direct, more straightforward, more focused on rhythm and melody.  sounding at times like something that could have been lifted off one of the sublime frequencies folk and pop sounds of… records.  or like a reigned in sun city girls ethnic guitarorisms from torch of the mystics.

i could blather on about modes and scales and tonality but i’m not enough of a muso to pull it off convincingly.

i will however blather on about the mojave desert stringscrape gypsy psyche of sidi mansour or the chanter / percussion shamanistic freakout of blood-stained sands (no geetar!). 

as the man said: “i wanted the whole record to reflect this type of sound, the sound of my people”

drag city / sir richard bishop / sun city girls