the of mirror eye

* Alvarius B: Gloomy June (2.0 mb) | Mosquito (3.0 mb) | El Mirage (2.5 mb) | Missing From Pasture (2.0 mb)
From Alvarius B : Abduction Records : ABDT-004

What we have here is the first Alvarius B record reissued for the first time since its initial release. And why am I so excited about this? Well, it just so happens that Alvarius B is the solo guise of Mr. Alan Bishop, brother to Sir Richard Bishop (look here) and one-third of the almighty Sun City Girls. The Sun City Girls are a genre bending trio that have been blowing minds for over twenty years now. They’ve explored every type of music from psychedelic to ethnic to pop to vaudevile.

When I first started getting into the Sun City Girls, I tried to track down as much of their stuff as I could. Unfortunately, many of their releases, including this one at the time, were long since out of print. So, you can understand just how exited I was to finally get a chance to hear this legendary solo album of his. This instrumental album (guitar, some harmonica) was recorded over a span of seven years onto various cassettes and then compiled for this release.

32 instrumental acoustic guitar excursions into a realm of weird Lo-Fi rustic beauty that sketch retro-portraits of several folk guitar styles, some which may never have existed before. From abrasive to delicate, these lucid antique paintings with acoustic guitar employ Appalachian polyrhythms, dark melodies, flamenco thrash, alien tunings, pseudo eastern drones, cinematic backroad twang, and other hybrid ideas not easily described. This record is a folk drifter classic and is now available again for the first time in a decade. (Abduction Records)

Needless to say, I am not in the lease bit dissapointed with this album. In fact, there’re some absolutely amazing moments of seemingly off-the-cuff guitar playing that this release consistently blows my mind.

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