More information about SIR RICHARD BISHOP + ARIANNE CHURCHMAN & BEN DREW tickets

SIR RICHARD BISHOP is renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, but he has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that's nearly unrivalled 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.

Bishop's first solo record, 'Salvador Kali', was released by John Fahey's esteemed Revenant Records label in 1998. Locust Music issued his second record, 'Improvika' (2004), which consisted of nine extemporaneous pieces for solo acoustic guitar. More recently 'Tangier Sessions', was released by Drag City in 2015. It consists of a series of improvisations recorded in Tangier, Morocco in 2014 using a 19th century parlour guitar of mysterious origin. Bishop's latest album, 'Hillbilly Ragas 'was released last September to widespread acclaim, whilst Drag City are currently prepping new title 'Hillbilly Erotica' as a speculative, avant-garde sequel to his stripped-back acoustic explorations.

https://sirrichardbishop.com/

ARIANNE CHURCHMAN & BENEDICT DREW are visual artists and musicians. Based in London and Kent their work together draws from English traditional music, minimalism, music concrete and electronic music. Using analogue synthesisers, acoustic instruments and layered vocals their work starts with traditional song with its lyrics corrupted and reimagined, it is then woven into sonic collages and landscapes, each layer spiraling out a little further from the last building into ecstatic melodies, rhythms and dreamscapes. Since 2020 they have recorded a selection of traditional May songs to coincide with May Day, releasing them digitally through Drew's Thanet Tape Centre label. In 2024 these were compiled into a 2xLP release MAY and was released by Loves Devotee. Their latest record The Tree of the Left Hand was released by Folklore Tapes in 2025.

https://folkloretapes.bandcamp.com/album/the-tree-of-the-left-hand