Sir Richard Bishop is a musician who has constantly transcended and defied convention and categorization over the past quarter-century, both with Sun City Girls (R.I.P.) and his own solo pursuits. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be held high in the pantheon of the greatest avant-garde/improv musicians to ever walk the earth. His records are otherworldly, expounding nature and exotic mysticism and beauty that are seldom found in music born of Western origin. While friends, family, and fans have been coping with the loss of SCG drummer Charles Gocher earlier this year, Bishop fortunately pulled through with a couple of exceptional records, While My Guitar Violently Bleeds and Polytheistic Fragments, which are loaded with enough vicious picked-guitar assaults and Far East instruments and philosophies to help take your mind off things happening close to home. With Dyllon West.

Listen to a sample of Sir Richard Bishop’s “Spanish Bastard.”

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Fri., Nov. 23, 8 p.m., 2007