The first thing that comes to mind when seeing the cover of protean guitarist Sean Shibe’s latest release is Watteau’s Pierrot. Then there’s the temptation to geek out in regard to the superb instruments Shibe performs on here: a Fender Mexican Stratocaster and a PRS Custom 24-08 35th Anniversary (drool drool). Not to mention the array of pedals used.

Such observations may or may not be relevant to the matter at hand. Which is the total effect of listening to what, in Shibe’s words, is an ‘overflowing toybox, some kind of emporium of curiosities’. Indeed, Shibe also talks of the ‘post-modern chaos of the electric guitar’ and of William Blake: ‘Only he reflects the strange light and celestial ambition of the works presented here.’ The album’s title is from Blake and it is his illustrations that illuminate the accompanying booklet, along with Hildegard of Bingen’s The Cosmic Tree, strange pictorial scores and a photograph of Moondog.

Intrigued yet? Shibe’s ‘softLOUD’ (Delphian, A/18) demonstrated his mastery of the electric guitar. But it is a mere distant cousin. ‘Lost & Found’ feels a more natural successor to his previous release, the meditative ‘Camino’ (Pentatone, 9/21). Despite the surface eclecticism, Shibe’s unique approach to the electric guitar – one based as much on exploring atemporal textures as on finding the vox humana, rather than the diabolus, in musica – binds together these pieces.

The opening track, Hildegard’s O viridissima virga – drone and chant electric’d – conjures images of a voice motivated by an unseen power. And a neon halo. There are also the ostinatos present in most of the works, dancing in the first of Chick Corea’s Children’s Songs, redolent of a mellow passacaglia in Moondog’s Pastoral II – such a contrast to the Beethovenian violence of the same composer’s preceding Sea Horse!

The trio of younger composers – Daniel Kidane, Oliver Leith and Shiva Feshareki – seem to inspire in Shibe an opaquer intensity. It is the arrangement of Messiaen’s O sacrum convivium! that under Shibe’s fingers truly evokes ‘eternity’s sunrise’, so strange, so magical is his/its vision.