Don Bikoff :: “Celestial Explosion (Composia For 6-String Guitar)”
Hailing from the countryside of Glen Clove, NY (Oyster Bay), on the North Shore of Long Island, the guitar genius and eccentric energy of Don Bikoff may be something new to you upon first reading this, even if your educated ears are fundamentally familiar with the likes of the late John Fahey and Robbie Basho, and respectfully so, but we assure you that the leveling legend of Bikoff and his lone 1968 masterpiece “Celestial Explosion (Composia For 6-String Guitar)”, which he recorded at the age of 21, is a force to be reckoned with in all its enlightening entirety that you're sure to entangle your ears with. Having met and sporadically corresponded with Fahey, Bikoff later admitted, “he did, in fact, record a number of my tunes but would not give me writer’s credit. That was John!” Living only an hour and some change from the Big Apple, more specifically, the biblically bustling and esoterically exciting Greenwich Village scene, it was there that Bikoff sophisticatedly spread his soul onto the sonic streets and in the culturally cosmic cafes and clubs of the scenes iconically influential nerve center and has since made a name for himself in this ever-growing chasms of the world’s music culture.
Where fragile and frigid mornings gratefully greet the spiritually smoldering summers during the collusion of a romantically concentrated climate, the music thrived in the duality of depth and poetic perspective, which had already set its roots back in the 1950s with the rise of the Beats, the fibers of folk music were changing, and it was only a matter of time till someone else took the reins. A much simpler yet complicated, to say the least, time and place that is so ingrained in the epicness of our cranium consciousness and harmonious history, the young musician penetrated the poetic perimeters of a complex community of writers, artists, musicians, and bands, revolutionists, and all-around Bohemian personalities of society, Bikoff befriended the likes of Jesse Fuller, the mighty Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee and quickly made a place for himself among the liberated legions of the most influential times in American music.
While occupying the critically acclaimed atmosphere of the city’s circus circuit, Bikoff cut his teeth on and off stage and even made time to annoy the great Dave Von Ronk, “Mayor of MacDougal Street,” one thing is for certain: the musician landed a deal with the short-lived city-based label Keyboard Records and was granted access to studio time to cut his legendary LP in all its ghostly glory. Featuring twelve tracks of transcendent tone and ritualistic rhymes, Bikoff broke the melodic mold by planting his feet firmly in the soundproof soil while bringing to life a fascinating body of work that effortlessly echoes through the hollowed halls of the mind and soul. With tracks like “Bathing Prohibited In The River Styx,” “Rindler’s Metamorphosis,” the album’s title track, and “The Formentera Moors Are Stomping Tonight,” Bikoff sonically secures his style and enlightening education in sound like that of his peers, while simultaneously paving the way for his own isolating installment in the Village’s history of harmonies and human expression.
