Five years after ‘Tangier Sessions’, Sir Richard Bishop, we presume, is back from his travels around the world. With ‘Oneiric Formulary’, he’s dug deeper into his bag of extramusical gestures from the eternal and unknowable, along with a few sounds we might recognize, all transmuted for our mortal ears’ enjoyment.

The last couple of Sir Richard Bishop releases on Drag City were genre exercises of sorts – ‘The Freak of Araby’ explored the musical legacy of late Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid while ‘Tangier Sessions’ explored the sound of an obscure 19th Century guitar that Rick had acquired from a mysterious Swiss luthier.

The title ‘Oneiric Formulary’, may sit contrarily on the tongue – but one may refer to it as representing “a collection of dream states.” With such a lofty goal in mind and at his fingertips, Sir Rick returns to the approach of his DC debut, ‘Polytheistic Fragments’ – a different sound, a different instrument, for nearly every track, drawing from the music of all nations, including and especially that infamous republic with only one person on the census roll (initials SRB). It’s got mad variety, the kind you don’t see much of anymore – an Ed Sullivan kind of evening out, with some spinning plates, dancing mice, and of course, an appearance from Zippy the Chimp.

Sir Richard found joy in not only finding unlikely sounds but also writing a fake jingle, soundtracking an unreleased film, reflecting on Southern origins, going concrète (Beatles-style!), using computers (Sir Rick, no!) and accidentally juxtaposing Frippian electric guitar drone against the grit of ol’ school acoustic guitar while thinking of sci-fi, as well as revisiting (t)rusty old forms such as Americana, classical, gypsy and raga. It’s all trotted out to phantasmic effect, as it brings to us with the freshness, the roar of the old crowd as they see, smell and hear the greatest show on Earth.