Sir Richard Bishop - Hillbilly Erotica [LP]

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: DC988
Barcode: 0781484098812
Release Date: 31 Jul 2026
Genre: Folk/Americana

 Sir Richard Bishop returns for a new spontaneous six-string meshing of people’s music, recollections and psychic intentions.
 Migration from last album’s ‘Ragas’ to this new ‘Erotica’ is another chapter in Bishop’s progress, drifting via songs into the further frontiers of his pappy’s hometown sounds, trancing over and out in their hand-me-down clothes. As with the ragas, the ‘rotica’s hung round the neck of John Fahey’s infamous dubbing of certain traditional American folk sounds as ‘American Primitive’. A perfectly good thought, but Sir Richard picks his own axe and chose a separate path. Rushing through gutters and picking pickled brains in the saucy headwaters of the down-low and literal American primitive, his hillbilly music is a mash of brined cultural inheritance, mini-ragas and moonshine-drunk savagery breaking out on the frets.
 As a conception for Sir Rick’s acoustic guitar music, it’s a dynamite means and frame, centring his improvisations in a place overflown with pagan desire and unbound in deliverance. Here he flies up and down the neck, his manner less pristine, yet more exquisite, a flailing, flowing-on-the-river medley through stubborn whitewater turbulence, post-grass and folk’s classical gas.
 As Sir Richard reminds us, ‘Hillbilly Erotica’ is: “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 night-time 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!”
 Like with ‘Hillbilly Ragas’, Sir Richard plays one acoustic guitar on all eight ‘Hillbilly Erotica’ cuts, no overdubs and, but for the closing ‘Postcoital Serenade’, improvised entirely. The not-so-sexy ‘sexy’ angle of song titles like ‘Lick Skillet’, ‘Sweet Lips’, ‘Hookers Bend’ and ‘Finger, Tennessee’ is actually actual names for dots on the map in rural TN, each one just five minutes removed - by horse, of course - from Richard’s dad’s remote Enville homestead, its town name purloined previously for a song on 2020’s ‘Oneiric Formulary’. This ancestral interzone’s a venue of interest for Rick, allowing him to ask the deep questions, like “What the hell has been going on around here with place names like these?” while running down the changes like no one else before.
 ‘Hillbilly Erotica’ promises unspoken wonders of the world around each and every dark corner, revelations of legacy, a new spyglass to sight your forebears. Imagined American music at its most gorgeous and violent, simply achieved by Sir Richard Bishop through a powerful application of steel-stringed instrumentation and delightfully exhaustive flights of speculative thought.

Tracklisting
Lick Skillet
Finger, Tennessee
Sweet Lips Spiritual
Back Forty Lashes
Bride of Rhythm Methodist
Finger Revisited
Hookers Bend
Postcoital Serenade