Sun City Girls, Sir Richard Bishop, Alvarius B

The Sun City Girls were formed in Phoenix, Arizona, around 1980 by brothers Rick Bishop (guitar) and Alan Bishop (bass), who grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, and drummer Charles Gocher. Their earliest recordings (dated 1982 and 1983 but released in 1987 on cassette) were God Is My Solar System and Superpower (a double), later compiled with various modifications and omissions on the double LP God Is My Solar System - Superpower (Eclipse, 2003).

As with much of the Arizona scene, the Sun City Girls’ sound is characterized by hallucinatory atmospheres typical of Phoenix "desert rock"; however, the trio also demonstrates a preference for instrumental pieces horrendously distorted by feedback, detuning, and assorted cacophonies. Their music and lyrics are initially inspired by a kind of cosmic religion in the vein of Sun Ra.

The cassette God, a sequence of eclectic compositions (the circus fanfare of Invocation, the jazz-rock theme of Suck Suntown) stitched together haphazardly, already contains the essence of their absurd acid rock. The strength of their art lies in instrumental improvisations that cover vast harmonic territory, drawing heavily from free jazz, recycling cacophonous eruptions in the style of Borbetomagus in Improv Murder, saxophone marches between Albert Ayler and Lol Coxhill like 3 Blind Mice, experiments on the border between minimalism and raga like Mosquito, and swing sarabandes without beginning or end like Sun City Girls From Ipanema, where a trace of "Zappa-ism" is still detectable.

For eight years, cassettes continued to pour out: in particular, Hatchet Rain in 1983 and Sun City Girls and Def-In-Italy in 1984. Alongside the usual ragged fanfares and free-jazz jams, Hatchet Rain shows a greater inclination toward Eastern music, as evidenced by the dizzying rondo of Black Tent, the feedback-burst propulsion of Caravan Of Scars, and the muezzin-like litany of Circus Haddam. Performance and recording are always rough, as if in contempt of the recording industry.

Valentines From Matahari (Majora, 1983) collects compositions from the same period, including the inscrutable fusion of Metaphors In A Mixmaster and the "spaghetti western" soundtrack of Sev Archer.

Sun City Girls (Placebo, 1984) recycles part of their old material and works as a sort of summary of their many influences. The recurring idea is to pulverize whatever recognizable genre they start with: the jazzy cinematic soundtrack Hitman Boy, the sleepy acid blues Jokers On A Waltz, the breezy jazz jam Rubber Stamp Icons, etc. The variety is overwhelming, from the chaotic cacophony Caravan Of Scars to the spoken-word satire Uncle Jim. The contrasts test the mind's ability to switch context: the atonal guitar and guttural vocals of Rappin' Head segue into the acoustic Chinese ballet My Painted Tomb, the free-form saxophone fanfare of Metaphors In A Mixmaster yields the whirling dervish dance of Helwa Shak that is reneged by the dissonant chamber music of A Moment of A Million Lands, and everything collapses in the hallucinated drone of Woman In Mourning. The operation is confused, naive and tentative, but the ambition is grand.

As many as seven cassettes were released in 1985, starting with To Cover Up Your Right To Live, a collection of covers (recorded between 1983 and 1985), Folk Songs Of The Rich And Evil (1985 - Eclipse, 2005), and Bleach Has Feelings Too (recorded between 1982 and 1984). Fruit Of The Womb, on the other hand, is an early masterpiece in which their insights into marrying jazz/eastern improvisation to rock find accommodation: from the Blue Mambo to the dizzying Damcar, from the psychedelic operetta of Night In Tetuan to the roaring cacophony of Jokers On A Waltz, and particularly in the pressing Trippin' On Krupa, a form of ultra-Dadaist suite is coined that arises at the crossroads of Savage Republic, the Grateful Dead of Aoxomoxoa, and the Zappa of Weasels. A worthy continuation of this project will be Polite Deception.

However, Exotica On Five Dollars A Day (Eclipse, 2005), containing a pow-wow and some jams, and Fresh Kill Of A Cape Hunting Dog (1987), containing material from 1983-85, fall short. Fresh Kill Of A Cape Hunting Dog / Def In Italy (Eclipse, 2004) collects the two cassettes into a double LP.

The two live parts of Cloaven Theatre (1986) make up an "audio drama improvisation." Midnight Cowboys From Ipanema (Breakfast Without Meat, 1986 - Amarillo, 1994) is another collection of covers.

Grotto Of Miracles (Placebo, 1986) instead marked a peak of professional concentration. Just like in their first album, the plethora of influences makes for a challenging, ever-shifting experience. However, unlike in the first album, this time around the ideas are fully developed instead of being scientifically sabotaged. Bishop's guitar art, in particular, stages the most visible improvement. Radio Morocco even harks back to the atmospheric guitar instrumentals of the 1960s. In A Lesbian Meadow is a swinging jazz-blues dance. Damcar is a Middle-eastern vignette at breakneck speed. Even the grating galactic effects of the abstract The Spice Nest signal a newfound adulthood. The rest of the band does its best to keep up with the guitarist. The best they can do, though, is to pollute his art with their idiosyncratic passion for destruction, not construction. Hence the loose Indian-psychedelic jam Different Kind Of Whore, the dilated crooning and sparse tones of Frankincense And Fish, and the noisy messy collective improvisation of Kal El Lazi Kad Ham. The eccentric overtones of the previous recordings are confined to the tribal musichall of Swing Of Kings and some crazy detours at the end of the album. When they play instrumental pan-ethnic music and weave it into their psychedelic web, the Sun City Girls have no rivals.

Horse Cock Phepner (Placebo, 1987) was a vastly inferior work that indulged in political satire (of dubious taste). At best they concoct the street rigmarole Horse Cock Phepner, the breathless drum-less rap of I Protect You From Me, the horror chant It's Underneath The House and especially the David Peel-esque singalong CIA Man. The eight-minute Without Compare sounds like a radio drama: mostly recited, with the instruments improvising random sounds. The album is too fragmented and ideological to stand on its own. The music is mainly the vehicle for the (vulgar) lyrics in the tradition of the Fugs, except that they don't have half the genius of the Fugs.

The cassette Multiple Hallucinations Of An Assassin (1988) collects outtakes from the sessions that would give rise to Torch. Tibetan Jazz 666 is another surreal cassette. Audio Letter To Mitch Meyers is the third part of Cloaven, and That Old Western Sieve the fourth.

The 1989 cassettes are titled Grave Robbing In The Future and Extra Sensory Defection. The latter contains two long live improvisations.

After the single And So The Dead Tongue Sang (Pulp) and yet another live cassette, Great North American Tricksters, the new album finally appeared: Torch Of The Mystics (Majora, 1990 – Tupelo, 1994). Though lacking the spontaneous exuberance of their early work, but endowed with an enviable sense of harmonic desecration, the album still triumphs in its improvised instrumental tracks—whimsical scores that seem played by the subconscious of a rattlesnake. The most total fusion (world music, jazz, hard rock, psychedelia) may be found in Radar 1941. The stumbling quadrille of Esoterica Of Abyssynia and the dizzying guitar solo of Vinegar Stroke are wordless romances no less delirious.
The singing is purely acoustic: rarely do the vocalists "say" anything. Most of the time they merely produce childlike sounds, often in comical registers that are themselves parodies of Third World musical traditions. Exemplary of the union between "those" instrumental parts and "those" vocal harmonies is the pow-wow of Tarmac, worthy of a group of completely drunk Native American sorcerers. Yet the quartet clearly has a special fondness for Middle Eastern chanting, playfully mocked both in the long Space Prophet Dogon and in Cafe Batik (with church organ and piercing falsetto). Their virtuosity in staging the vocal parts stands out in Burial In The Sky: a nasal Tibetan voice is layered with other voices of the same kind and counterpointed by sparse percussion with a background of cicada crackling. The effect is meant to be hypnotic, but it is hilarious.

The group’s discography, by now relocated to Seattle, expanded enormously, but is almost entirely on vinyl and CD: Dawn Of The Devi (Majora, 1991), very improvised and chaotic, and Live From Planet Boomerang (Majora, 1991), a tour de force of collective improvisation (Just Say No To Why, You COuld Be Making History, Music Of The Great Southwest); and the singles Three Fake Female Orgasms (Majora, 1992), You're Never Alone With A Cigarette (Majora, 1992), Let's Just Lounge/ Immortal Gods.

The EP Eye Mohini (Majora, 1992) showcases the band’s maturity: the flamenco of the title track, the oriental-flavored Gum Arabic, the melodic Lemurs Urine, and the improvised jam Kal El Lazi Kad Ham represent the culmination of one of the most original and daring trajectories in alternative rock.

Napoleon & Josephine (Scratch, 1992), Caroline Tribute (Nuf Sed), and Borungku Si Derita (Majora) are the last singles released publicly. The EP Live Instruments Of Torture (Poon Village, 1993), containing four improvised jams (including Nephthys and Nites Of Malta), and the album Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings (Majora, 1993), composed of only three jams (Venerable Song, Multiple Hallucinations, Omani Red Light), revived their glory.

Kaliflower (Abduction, 1994) contains six instrumental tracks that endlessly repeat their post-psychedelic techniques. Juggernaut (1997) and Piasa (1994) are soundtracks for films yet to be completed, while Jacks Creek (Abduction, 1994) is a collection of tracks inspired by old-fashioned "hillbilly" music. These records show less genius and more dispersion.

Apna Desh 78 (Deep Eddy Grammaphone, 1995) confirms that the greatest secret of underground music has simply become a trash heap.

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The double album 330,003 Cross Dressers From Beyond The Rig Veda (Abduction, 1996 - Locust, 2002) is a tribute of sorts to India, with little or no rock (nor jazz) to be heard. The silly musichall skit of Civet's Tango is luckily the exception and not the rule. The pseudo-Buddhist prayer CCC (for piano, guitar, choir and rain), the frenzied guitar dance Apna Desh, the shamanic invocation of Rookoobay, the spirited syncopated dance Kickin' The Dragon, the brief percussion concertos of Sardhama Royale and Candi Sukuh, the gamelan noisefest Delong Song, compose a multifaceted portrait of Indian civilization viewed through the eyes of a Western eccentric; and sometimes the outcome is an accomplished song like the poignant lament Cruel And Thin. Alas, they are less successful when they venture into longer instrumental jams like Kumari Sweet, in which the Indian elements end up sounding like cheap parodies. The organ drones of Shin Paku, coupled with gloomy drumming, do create a suspenseful and fearful mood. The electroacoustic collage of Vimana Of The Twilight further shifts the ethnic experiment towards a metaphysical dimension. Bishop leads the eight-minute Cineraria Blue, an acid fusion of blues and raga that fares much better. Bishop's guitar unleashes shrill dissonant tones creating a dense atmosphere in the absence of any rhythm. The 34-minute Ghost Ghat Trespass, featuring an extended violin improvisation by Eyvind Kang, is a slow-rising raga that peaks halfway with a collective space-rock progression. It then implodes into a flow of disjointed dissonant noises and only towards the end it finds the focus to coalesce again. The album is packed with dozens of intuitions that may not always interact and cross-pollinate, but, as a whole, compose an imposing and visionary work of synthesis; or maybe just the opposite of synthesis.

The double album Dante's Disneyland Inferno (Abduction, 1996 - Locust, 2002) is entirely sung/spoken. The choice of material is even sloppier, but the arrangement (which relies on a slew of instruments) is the most lambasted and professional of their career.

The triple Box Of Chameleons (Abduction, 1997) also collects the few tracks that had escaped the official discography (mostly tracks of almost offensive uselessness).

Then came yet another live album, In The Land Of The Rising Sun City GirlsPint Sized Spartacus, while Charles Gocher and Rick Bishop also started the New Session People, with Patrick Barber (Blowhole) and Steve Hanson (Totem Pole of Losers), whose Famous Songs From Days Gone By is a tribute to organist Ken Griffin.

They had been one of the most underrated bands of the 1980s, and now they were on their way to becoming one of the most overrated underground bands of the 1990s.

Sun City Girls then released yet another soundtrack, Dulce (1998).

Very few bands have been so redundant as Sun City Girls, who have recorded just about anything in their career. Cameo Demons And Their Manifestations (Abduction, 2000) is the first installment in a series titled "Carnival Folklore Resurrection". The title-track is a free-form jam that stands as their least organized work ever, which can be a gift or a curse, depending on how much one wants to listen "musicians" making noise in a studio. The closing Lunar Gun-Point Recollections displays a wildly chaotic and festive mood, like circus music played by the marching band of a mental institution.

The following chapters are: The Dreamy Draw (Abduction, 2000), dreamy and atmospheric, Superculto (Abduction, 2000), gothic and percussive, and A Bullet Through The Last Temple (Abduction, 2000). While not always impeccable, and often improvised in the sense of "amateurish", these are radical works, that have little or no respect for form and order.

Alan Bishop, meanwhile, had already launched his side project Alvarius B with two self-titled LPs (1994 and 1997).

The Dreamy Draw (Abduction, 2000), performed live in may 1998 at a club in Seattle, contains four brief compositions that share a hypnotic structure (as opposed to their traditional "chaotic" approach) and two lengthy jams. The shorter tracks rely on very simply musical elements: a repetitive piano pattern in Extinct Special, sparse tom-toms in Cavernous Procession, etc. Even when they try to act seriously, the ensemble can't help sounding clownish. The 21-minute monster The Dreamy Draw is nothing more than free-form percussions played at random and at will. The 12-minute sonata Rotation Flotation is the most interesting piece here, mainly a duet between a nocturnal piano figure and clarinet drones.

A Bullet Through The Last Temple (Abduction, 2000) is the most rooted in free-jazz. Unfortunately, the majority of the tracks are mere fragments. The combo's intentions are better presented by the two 8-minute jams: Samba Venez Norte pivots around a romantic trumpet and piano duet, while A Bullet Through The Last Temple resorts to the Art Ensemble's gentle chaos. Narcolodic and Hiccup Tribe Scan Tumor Flower toy with the most conventional jazz structure. The rest of the album draws inspiration from sources as various as Lol Coxhill's Welfare State (as in the demented fanfare of Junky Fado) and Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh (Old Nancy Wardrobe), but adds little to the canon. No matter what style they tackle, the Sun City Girls are first and foremost self-indulgent. No doubt they also grow an impressive garden of ideas, but they rarely let them bloom.

Severed Finger With A Wedding (Abduction, 2000) is a live performance of their cosmic, psychedelic jazz-rock. Sandwiched between the 10-minute Chameleon 2000 and the 12-minute Get To Nonya, the raga-psych-jazz ruminations of Drippin' On Stupa, Helen Waite and Severed Finger With A Wedding are no less disturbing.

Less interesting are the following chapters of the "Carnival": Sumatran Electric Chair (Abduction, 2001) and Libyan Desert (Abduction, 2001), although the latter's title-track is a good raga-jazz-acid excursion.

By the eight volume, Handsome Stranger (Abduction, 2001), recorded between 1997 and 1998, it is clear that this series simply collects leftovers and outtakes of little or no importance. High Asia Lo-Pacific (Abduction, 2002) comprises part nine and ten. The former offers world-music for exotic stringed instruments and middle-eastern chanting, besides the usual free-form acid-rock jams. The latter is a 40-minute collage of musique concrete and found sounds somewhere between Negativland and Stockhausen's Hymnen.

Wah (Abduction, 2003) and Flute and Mask (Abduction, 2003) continue to rip off the band's fans with low-quality, uninspired music.

The double-disc album Radio One & Two (Abduction, 2004), i.e. volumes 11 and 12 of the "Carnival Folklore Resurrection" series, and 98.6 Is Death (Abduction, 2004), i.e. volume 13 of the series, are live performances of the usual kind.

Meanwhile, Sir Richard Bishop had launched a solo career. Salvador Kali (Revenant, 1998) was a set of seriously virtuoso instrumentals that spanned ethnic, jazz and classical music. The Mediterranean dance Burning Caravan is a mere (lightweight) appetizer. If the nine-minute raga Rasheed, with its stuttering quality, sounds indulgent and amateurish, the 14-minute piano sonata Al-Darazi is both austere and intricate in the way it weaves together Middle-eastern and Western classical music. The ten-minute Kamakhya, in the folkish acoustic manner of John Fahey, betrays a degree of neurosis that is partly due to his reading of Indian music in a rock context, and the harmonium counterpoint seems to highlight precisely the psychological instability. The closer, Morella, instead is a shameful compromise with new-age music that harks back to the atmospheric guitar instrumentals of the 1960s.
His second solo album, Improvika (Locust, 2005), was instead an album of solo guitar improvisation workouts in the manner of John Fahey-inspired solo raga guitarists such as Jack Rose and Steffen Basho-Junghans. However, Gnostic Gem relishes a much less fluid style, a slow and brainy form of introspection that relies more on an almost dissonant sequence of notes than on a smooth flow. The tender and pastoral Rudra's Feast, instead, is a simple celebration of life. The postcard of Jaisalmer evokes the desert and the labirynth, the caravans and the pilgrims, the temples and the markets. These three pieces represent three different forms: the philosophical, the narrative and the cinematic. The devotional hymn to the female deity Tripurasundari adds a fourth dimension. This is the most homogeneous of his albums. There is relatively little intrusion from peripheral influences such as jazz or ethnic music (other than ragas).
With the nine pieces of Fingering The Devil (Latitudes, 2005) Bishop refined the blend of raga, flamenco, jazz and folk guitar styles that he had coined on Improvika. Hence the flamenco-tinged Abydos, the Balkan-tinged Romany Trail, the whirling dervish psalm Anatolia, each of them fueled by romantic melodic patterns. Dream Of The Lotus Eater does a much better job than usual at the introspective, transcendental John Fahey-esque format. Fingering The Devil hints at a higher spiritual dimension, while the gritty and jittery Black Eyed Blue sounds like an earthly conversation on the human condition. The 14-minute Howrah Station demonstrates a visionary case of impressionism, as Bishop's convulsed fingerpicking mirrors the chaotic and colorful flow of people, its frenzied crescendo driven by a chain reaction of geometric patterns.
Bishop's artistic progression culminated with While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust Music, 2007), that contains three of his most daring pieces. The sprightly Zurvan weaves together Greek, gypsy and Middle-eastern motifs. The eleven-minute Smashana released tidal waves of ghostly metallic dissonances, decaying into total anarchic cacophony, sounding like one of the early electronic poems of Morton Subotnick performed on electric guitar instead of synthesizer. The 25-minute Mahavidya tries to follow the letter of the Indian raga, beginning with a quiet meditation, picking up steam as it goes with a display of strumming bravura, excelling at the brisk self-referential call-and-response technique of the middle part, and finally soaring with a frantic hypnotic sufi-like dance. However, as far as classical Indian music goes, the piece merely borrows the Indian scale, but lacks the "ornaments" (the microtonal subtlety) of a professional raga and sounds a bit amateurish. Polytheistic Fragments (Drag City, 2007) collected shorter vignettes in a broad assortment of styles, but rarely as interesting as the solo-piano Saraswati.

Meanwhile, Alvarius B's Blood Operatives Of The Barium Sunset (Abduction, 2005) had featured Eyvind Kang, Randall Dunn, Tim Young and Andrew McGinnis and delivered an array of acid musichall skits (even a cover of Ennio Morricone's Dirty Angels).

The 14th volume of the "Carnival Folklore Resurrection" series, Static From The Outside Set (Abduction, 2006) is a confused hodgepodge of 29 tracks to test the patience of the last few people interested in the project.

Djinn Funnel (2006) collects live performances from 1999-2001.

Piano Bar (2006) released some unreleased material of wildly different stylistic nature.

Drummer Charles Goucher died in 2007 and Bishop dissolved the Sun City Girls.

Sir Richard Bishop released his first avantgarde documentary, God Damn Religion (Locust, 2008), accompanied with his industrial suite Elektronika Demonika (2006), originally a limited-edition LP.

The soundtrack to Korine's film Mister Lonely (Drag City, 2008) is a collaboration between the Sun City Girls and Jason Pierce of Spiritualized.

You're Never Alone With A Cigarette (Abduction, 2008) collects Sun City Girls singles, including You're Never Alone With A Cigarette, Three Fake Female Orgasms and a twelve-minute version of The Fine-Tuned Machines Of Lemuria.

Mixing Middle-eastern traditionals, covers and originals, Sir Richard Bishop's The Freak of Araby (Drag City, 2009) was a tribute of sorts to Arab music, and his first album with a backing band (a quartet of Arab musicians). Highlights are the seven-minute suspense-ful guitar solo Taqasim for Omar (even reminiscent of Jimmy Page's mystical solos with Led Zeppelin) the more conventional dance-rock of The Pillars of Baalbek (sort of Carlos Santana for the pan-ethnic generation) and the seven-minute trumpets and drums maelstrom of Blood-Soaked Sands.

Sun City Girls changed name to Master Musicians of Bukkake for Totem One (Conspiracy, 2009) and added members of Earth and Burning Witch.

Meanwhile, the trio of Sir Richard Bishop, Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano formed Rangda (two guitars and drums) to record False Flag (Drag City, 2010), a varied and unpredictable collection. The brief, chaotic and noisy Waldorf Hysteria sounds like punk-rock for children. The eight-minute Fist Family is even more extreme, just an eruption of noise and beats. On the other hand Sarcophagi is nocturnal lounge music, and Bull Lore is basically a power-ballad without lyrics and with Morricone-ian overtones. The 15-minute Plain Of Jars is the only piece of some substance, although it borrows from early Pink Floyd Jimi Hendrix's 1983 without quite the same degree of imagination, ending up with one of Bishop's delirious faux-raga solos.

Sun City Girls' Funeral Mariachi (Abduction, 2010), a collection of short pieces recorded before Gocher's death, sounds like a hodgepodge of disparate ideas that each member developed separately and were organized only in the studio. The mood is much more relaxed and adult than it was 20 years earlier, and maybe inevitably so. A confused atmospheric collage Ben's Radio leads the parade of guitar vignettes (The Imam, Blue West) and pan-ethnic tunes (Black Orchid). The production is almost baroque (at least by their standards). However, the general effect is to sedate these litanies to the point that they often sound like new-age music (the piano adagio Vine Street Piano) or vintage muzak (Holy Ground, Come Maddalena).

Alvarius B's Baroque Primitiva (Poon Village, 2011) looks like a pretext to deliver Ennio Morricone covers (six out of the twelve pieces).

Rangda was a two-guitar supergroup formed by Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls, Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Chris Corsano that debuted on the instrumental False Flag (Drag City, 2010).

Richard Bishop rarities surfaced on Intermezzo (Ideologic Organ, 2012) and The Unrock Tapes (Unrock, 2012). Alan Bishop's Radio Moderna (2013) and the 25 fragments of Alvarius B's Fuck You and the Horse You Rode In On (2013) were very minor works. Richard Bishop's Road To Siam (Unrock, 2014) was a more serious release, as was Alvarius B's If You Don't Like It...Don't! (Three Lobed, 2014), a collection of 12 brief pieces plus the seven-minute Midwestern Serenade.

Road Stories (2014), a split album with Bill Orcutt, contains a 17 minute variation of Zurvan.

Live Room (2006) documents a live Sun City Girls performance.

Alvarius B continued to release half-baked albums like What One Man Can Do With an Acoustic Guitar, Surely Another Can Do With His Hands Around the Neck of God (2014), Chin Spirits (2014), Mother of All Sinners (2016), a collaboration with •Sam Shalabi, Alvarius B vs Abdel Baqy Byro in Cairo (2017), the triple disc With a Beaker on the Burner and an Otter in the Oven (2017), etc. Alan Bishop also formed The Dwarfs of East Agouza with Sam Shalabi. More importantly, he founded the Sublime Frequencies record label which promoted music from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.