Did you know one of the strangest guitar records of the 1970s wasn’t made in a studio—but conjured like a ritual?
I only heard about Master Wilburn Burchette and his quite elusive, rare and expensive records in early Eighties from one of my discs-pusher, Franco Zanetti… this music wasn’t to be found in records shops but only mail-ordered to the artist himself..
Knowing my deep and sincere interest for the likes of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, he insisted ‘til I bought a couple of the Master’s himself and it was an epiphany.
California mail-order mystic turned self-taught guitarist, Master Wilburn Burchette spent the early ’70s translating the unseen into sound. Obsessed with both music theory and parapsychology from a young age, he built his own instruments, studied harmony like a system of equations, and began shaping what he called “tonal pictures.” Between 1971 and 1977, he released seven albums in seven years. Records like Guitar Grimoire framed music as something closer to ritual than entertainment, each track mapping out a kind of inner vision.
Burchette placed cryptic ads in the back pages of obscure magazines, offering a Psychic Meditation Course that taught people not just how to hear music, but how to actually listen to it. His albums came with dense instructions and philosophical notes, guiding listeners to engage with sound as a tool for awareness. To him, music wasn’t passive, it was a way to interact with consciousness itself, driven by intention, emotion, and what he saw as a kind of everyday “magic.”
Listen to this (it’s on Spotify) and you’ll find yourself in some California Mount Tamalpais’ stargate.
This music, which - as I told you - I discovered in early ‘80s, deeply inspired and influenced my way of playing and improvising.
At the core of his thinking was a stripped-down view of the occult. He didn’t believe in witches or magic the way religion or horror stories describe them. Instead, he saw “magic” as intuition, hunches, pattern recognition, the mind working ahead of explanation.
At the height of it, he walked away. He burned his materials, stopped making music, and reinvented himself as a psychic under another name, publishing newsletters and making a living on predictions. Decades later, still elusive and wary of attention, he stuck to one guiding principle that defined both his work and his disappearance: preserve the mystery.
The ongoing reissue series is rooted in that same principle. Since 2015, we’ve worked to preserve and reintroduce Burchette’s recordings as they were meant to be experienced, carefully archiving original materials and faithfully reproducing the texts, inserts, and ephemera that accompanied each release, restoring the complete context of his work for a new audience while honoring the strange, deliberate world he created.
~~~~~~~~
Master Wilburn Burchette was an American musician (guitar, synthesizer) and "mail order mystic". Born in 1939 in California (USA). Found dead in 2023 (aged 84) in the home he shared with his brother Kenneth (also found dead, aged 76) in El Cajon near San Diego (USA).
Burchette was a largely selt-taught guitarist and self-taught mystic, whose fascination with the occult began around the age of 12 when he "had been transfixed by the parapsychological, spending as much time reading books on Tibetan mysticism fundamentals as he did practicing guitar, the vibrations of which he used to create tonal pictures and patterns."
After time spent teaching classical guitar, he constructed an Impro guitar with 6 different woods, with mahogany for the base, soft pine, elder, and rosewood. The neck was inlaid with abalone shells.
Then, in the 7 years between 1971 and 1977, he released 7 albums of guitar and synthesizer music, mostly via his Burchette Brothers label (run jointly with his brother Kenneth, a chemist). He advertised these albums via mail order ads, hidden in the back pages of Fate Magazine, Beyond Reality, and Gnostica News.
On offer: Burchett's seven-part, block-printed "Psychic Meditation Course," designed to teach people how to listen to music. To go along with his lessons: his instrumental guitar and electronic records featuring ornate hand-drawn cover designs, complete with listening instructions from the master himself. After 1977, he abruptly burnt and discarded everything related to his musical explorations.
Tonight was my third experience with Anthony Braxton's music - this time at Only Connect Festival at Oslo. Soloists were the fantastic POING trio and Susana Santos Silva. Great to work again with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra here - the KORK orchestra.
I selected basically the same pieces that I used at the Proms gig in 2024- the large orchestra work from the early 70's Composition no.27. In addition several large ensemble works - Compositions 46(10 winds and brass),59,63(both of which have 2 soloists) and 151( a stunning piece for 25 players from the 80's I believe).Susana was also conducting(when she wasn't playing trumpet). Both of us could switch to Language Music which means we can at will ask players to play long notes or trills for example(and add dynamics if we want). Poing and Susana did solos,duos,trios and quartet independently of what I(or Susana) was doing.
The only decision about the order of pieces was starting with the opening of 27 with the full orchestra.
I will share the recording when its broadcast on Norwegian Radio.This music is so inventive and demands so much from players and listeners.In the best sense! So inspiring. I hope more conductors and orchestras will start playing this uniqe and mind blowing music!
Thanks to Ilan Volkov for sharing above interesting stuffs.
Here is a rare Esoteric Audio Research microphone made by Tim de Paravicini!
A one of a kind mike, indeed… almost like the ultimate, larger version Kavi Alexander used in most of his Water Lily’s masterpieces.
This is a true collector’s item… here are some well informed words from Haden Boardman:
“When I worked with Tim, he was explaining the difficulty in making this microphone, the amount of pure engineering that went in to the machined grill slots.
He only found one engineer who could make all the parts to a standard he wanted. Sadly this engineer passed away, and Tim never found anyone to replace it with. The last of these made around 35 years ago now.
Beyond rare, shame there is not a pair, I might decide selling the car to get them!”
The mic comes with the original multi pin microphone cable and pattern selector/power box.
The mic uses the Milab 2700 rectangular capsule and has a hand wound output transformer made by Tim himself.
Sapporo Precision Inc. make the best race bearings in the world and that’s why every Audio Origami tonearm employs them in the precision gimbal.
💫
This very Dunlop’s alloy thumb-pick played a lifetime of music and gigs and records… well-honed and polished after decades of use, here it is for posterity.
💫
Chris Spedding - Songs Without Words - Rare first pressing on EMI Harvest Odeon 1971. Catalogue number SHVL 776, the album was never issued in the UK on Chris’s insistence as he did not want to be identified purely as a Jazz guitarist.
Recorded before ‘Backwood Progression’ though after he terminated The Battered Ornaments, it is actually a very accomplished LP. Now available as a CD on both Hux and Esoteric.
Chris Spedding: guitars
Roger Potter: bass
John Marshall: drums
John Mitchell: piano
Paul Rutherford: trombone
produced by :
Peter Eden & Chris Spedding
recording data in the late 1969
Here is a comment on this album by Chris Spedding (written in 1992)
“I've been making records now for twenty years.
Records with other artists and records of my own.
During that time I learned a lot, and the lessons I learned, as usually happens,
I learned mainly from trial and error. By making mistakes and trying not to
make the same mistakes again! I still make mistakes - different ones I hope
- and in a way I hope I continue to do so. Wouldn't it be awful to know
everything about making music? I think so.
I still need to learn. When I don't have that need to learn it will be time to stop making music.
Now, some of my early records I find very difficult to listen to.
I hear things I would do very differently now. But I do remember that at the time
I was very serious about them and I know that I made an honest and sincere attempt to do the best I could. And some of that early stuff
I actually liked at the time and remember being quite proud of myself
when the records got released. And I quite frequently got favorable reviews too, so they must not have been all that bad.
Plus I still get fans that say they still enjoy listening to this material,
so | try to live with it, consoling myself that I had done the best
that I could at the time.
In the case of my own records (as distinct from my session work),
I naturally had a lot more control over what got recorded and released.
One outstanding exception, however is the album
"Songs Without Words"
This album bothers me more than any other.
In the early 60's I had gone through a period of forsaking my first love of Rock music and I became a bit of a "Jazz Snob".
This was before "Jazz-Rock Fusion" became the fashion, of course.
By the time the Fusion movement came about in the late 60's and early 70's
I was happily back to playing Rock music. But these “new" fusion players were mostly just jazz musicians looking to try something new and most of them were pretty unknowledgable about Rock - a music many of them had been pretty quick to disparage and look down upon!
These men badly needed a credible rock element in their music
- preferably a guitar - and preferably a guitarist with some jazz background.
So I seemed to fit their needs very well. Even though my interest at this
had moved from jazz back firmly to Rock, where it was to remain,
I found myself playing with every conceivable fusion outfit working around London during the period 1969 to 72. Names like Mike Gibbs, Mike Westbrook, Nucleus and Jack Bruce come to mind. I even remember a Melody Maker Jazz poll when the readers voted me the number two (John
McLaughlin was number one) best Jazz guitarist! It was probably this surprising poll result which led to me being asked to record a Jazz album under my own leadership.
They obviously figured that the poll result demonstrated that I had a big enough following for such a record to sell quite well.
I was a little dubious since I knew my heart and soul was not into this fusion
stuff, but I hated to turn down the offer! Who knows, it might turn out great.
But I was wary enough to agree to try it only on the condition that it was to be
an experiment, and if I didn't feel happy with the result then the record would
never be put out. This condition was agreed to and I went ahead with the writing and recording, hoping that something special and magical would happen on the day of recording.
Despite my best efforts I thought the result uninspiring, I felt I sounded ill
at ease and unconvincing and there was nothing new being said.
The producer stood by our agreement and said he wouldn't put it out.
So imagine my feelings when I discovered it had been released a year
or two later in Japan! I don't know how or why this happened
and it was obviously too late for me to do anything about it."
Listen to this! Posted to YouTube a few days ago, this is an extremely rare shellac master "test pressing" of the unissued (on 78) take 2 of "Cross Road Blues" (a.k.a. "Crossroad Blues") by famed delta blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson, recorded in 1936.
Sound restorer Nick Dellow got his hands on a a shellac master test pressing of blues legend Robert Johnson. This disk had been made in 1940 from the original metal parts, which had been acquired by Columbia Records, and left forgotten in the company’s storage facility in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The sound quality is stunning. — Credit Ted Gioia for the tip: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/blues-legend-robert-johnson-like and to Chad Kassem’s Acoustic Sounds 🖖
.jpg)
.jpg)
