Audiopile Review: It seems the well-spring of private-press new age music will never run dry. In all honesty, a lot of pivotal music from this zone is still waiting in the wings. Think about how long we waited for Hiroshi Yoshimura’s ‘Green’ to come into print. This year, we’re finally getting a reissue of Tim Buckley guitarist Lee Underwood’s ‘California Sigh’. And Ray Lynch’s ‘Deep Breakfast’ remains bafflingly unavailable. For now, though, we have a re-issue motherlode of albums by Master Wilburn Burchette. A lot of recent new age reissues have used the more decorous genre tag ‘ambient’. But there’s no doubting that Burchette was the private-press new age real deal. These five (5) albums, recorded between 1972 and ’77, show him to be the perfect mix of hippie spirituality, punk rock attitude, good-hearted charlatanism, and freewheeling musical inventiveness. There’s really nothing like these globe-trotting, star-sailing echoplexed guitar explorations. Maybe the more earthy parts of ‘Opens the Seven Gates…’ recall Sandy Bull. But Wilburn Burchette, rarely stayed fixed to terra firma. Check ‘Music of the Godhead’ for some serious space-faring business. But all these albums are beyond worth hearing. Welcome to your new cosmic obsession.

California mail-order mystic Master Wilburn Burchette was first known from his ads, hidden in the back pages of Fate Magazine, Beyond Reality, and Gnostica News. On his 1972 sophomore album, Burchette channels dreamy early music, druid folk, electric fingerstyle, psychedelic balladry, and new age ontology to create a visionary guitar technique all his own. This faithful reproduction includes the original 12-page full color instruction book for the secret method of piercing the psychic heart.