Drag City 
Sir Richard Bishop : The Freak of Araby (UK,2009)****
Very often when musicians play too much of other world’s music which they have no real affinity with, there are simplifications or exploitations or other aspects involved that does not make it work out too successfully, compared to what a creative soul could do with it when that affinity could remember what the tunes are about, outside its repeating pattern for a conditioned recognition and foundation of a group’s mind. Also, the last few years I heard many examples of people rediscovering their own mixed origins finding new fusions and crossovers, often with a sadness for some of the elements or connections that were or have became lost. I was a bit afraid, although I knew Sir Richard Bishop’s work well, that any of these aspects might participate in the making, or that too known traditionals would be chosen to be covered in any sort of simplified form one step away from the essence of inspiration or tradition or its revitalising of tradition, but luckily it is not the case. Although Sir Richard Bishop never showed it before, he has his own Lebanese heritage/origins, and above all he knows at least one great example from Lebanon of someone who showed already a perfect bridge between east and west in a Lebanese way, like ‘Omar Khorshid and his magical guitar’. This guitarist made beautiful electric guitar records with a surf and twang vision on Arab music and Western tunes, often with well combined occasional moog elements. Besides Omar Khorshid has also made electric guitar arrangements for belly dance music, and rearrangements of Om Khartoum songs. This last sort of approach you could find more often in Lebanon, like you for instance also had ‘Mohamed Hegazi and his golden guitar’ (also released over here), who played electric guitar mixed with an equal share of organ improvisation and Belly Dance percussion. This Lebanese belly dance music is comparable to Egyptian belly dance music but it has distinctive guitarists and organ improvisation, more than giving attention to the percussive aspect.
Sir Richard Bishop continues this Lebanese tradition, and dedicate the opener of the album to Omar Khorshid. The percussion (with electric bass too), by several Arab players is also of minor importance, and is used even more sparsely with also more attention to the calmly and nicely building up guitar moods and slow dances. We can hear Middle Eastern and Arab tunes and improvisations, -some tunes from different origins?-, and at times with a rather semi-flamenco-like or a bit more often slow rumba-like touches (from folk dance origin). There is no real distinction between unknown and known tunes or original compositions. Lots of tunes I recognise but they are interpreted with a personal feeling for the music, in a joyful way. I also like the way they used two guitars more often. For me especially “Sidi Mansour” with a few more improvisations on the guitars covers the creative spirit of Omar Khorshid well, where the second guitar uses a sort of picking echoing effect, recalling also a bit the ideas brought forward by Khorshid when combining guitar with moog... The last track is an improvisation on Moroccan clarinets, and Afro-Arab percussion, which wind instruments with some space or echo effect recall a bridge between North African/Arab and even another tradition of Tibetan trumpets or who knows Scottish pipes, just like a disturbing moment to awake/attract attention, until the lead whistle instrument here becomes weirder and slightly jazzy, a mix of a disturbed, controlled and open mind, up to a new tradition ?? A good ritualistic ending, which at times could work as a disturbed and weird otherwise as a distance-making ending, while the conclusion remains that in this album a new variation and start was shown which came from a respectful creative tradition of Lebanese electric guitarists...
