“I often pull out my old records to see what they sound like,” said 56-year old guitarist Loren Connors, speaking via phone from his Brooklyn apartment.”I don’t want to repeat what I did before. I want to make sure what I’m doing sounds new, and that I’m evolving.”

Connors recently spent extra time with his vast discography to compile “Night Through” (Family Vineyard), a new three-disc retrospective collecting singles, compilation appearances, and rare material originally released in editions as small as 50. It ranges as far back as a 1976 adaptation of Robert Johnson’s “Come in My Kitchen,” and includes material as new as the twopart 2004 piece, “For Miles Davis.”

In 71 tracks, “Night Through” offers a fascinating journey through an eversearching mind.Connors’s desolate music, which is almost always improvised, incorporates early blues, avant-garde jazz, and rustic folk. He is often mentioned in the same breath as two other inimitable guitarists, John Fahey and Derek Bailey. But while those two frequently played their guitars at rapid paces, Connors is more restrained, using sparse, slow chords that sound like ghosts lurking in the shadows.

Connors grew up in New Haven, Conn. His mother, Mary Mazzacane, was a classical singer, and one of her performances from 1959 is included on “Night Through.””She has a little shoebox full of tapes that I took that from,” Connors said. “She was a very good singer; she did these gigantic opera shows on big stages. When I listen to her voice, I can hear some of my guitar phrasings and the way I attack a note.”

Connors played violin as a child and took up trombone and guitar in high school. He later attended art school and has cited painting, particularly the work of Mark Rothko, as an influence on his music. In the late 1970s his “Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations,” raw recordings in which Connors moaned along to bluesy, unpredictable string plucks,were released on his own Daggett label, named for the New Haven street where he then lived.

After a brief break in the 1980s, Connors found himself revitalized by a move to New York in 1990. Playing mostly electric guitar and performing at such venues as the Cooler and the Downtown Music Gallery, he became championed by enthusiasts like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and writer Byron Coley, who reissued the Daggett series in a four-CD box. “I’ve met a lot of people here, and it’s made my music more lively and diversified,” Connors said. “Connecticut was more laid back, so my music was more folky, and when I got down here it got more urbanized.”

Connors’s life in New York has had challenges as well. In 1992 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and in 2004 he broke his right wrist so severely that he wears a brace when not playing to protect against further damage. Yet he is unfazed by his ailments. “I take pills all day long, and if they’re working, there’s no effect on my playing,” Connors said. “Except sometimes I think it affects my brain activity and makes my music a little more lively.The extra energy boost comes out in the playing.”

Since 1990, Connors’s energy has resulted in over 20 albums on more than a dozen labels around the globe. His latest is the double CD “Sails,” which, like many of his recent releases, was mostly recorded on a four-track alone in his home. Its gentle suites of ruminative guitar convey a current thematic interest.”It’s oceanic,” Connors said,”a kind of sea story, which all my stuff seems to be in the last 10 years or so, maybe because I grew up near the ocean.”

That theme culminates in a 36-minute title track mixing exploratory guitar with movie dialogue that at times sounds like a film score recorded underwater.”The voices that you hear on that are from a 1932 documentary called ‘Man of Aran,'”Connors said.”It’s about the Aran Islands, a fishing community off the West coast of Ireland.”

“Sails” also contains the sole musical meeting between Connors and Fahey, an eerie piece called “Dark is the Night, Cold is the Ground,” recorded in the Harlem studio of the avant-rock group No Neck Blues Band. “That happened in 2000, about a year before John died,” Connors said. “I had been his friend for about five years before that, but we had never played together. I walked around, and he sat on a chair the whole time. I was kind of prowling around him.”

Such collaboration has become Connors’s preferred mode of performance. He’s played with scores of admiring musicians like Jim O’Rourke, Cat Power’s Chan Marshall, and Japanese underground guitar legend Keiji Haino. “I’m not interested in playing live by myself anymore,” Connors said. “I’ve done enough of that. It’s more fun to play with other people.”

Connors has also performed three times with Jandek, the reclusive Texan who has made records since the 1970s but only recently began playing in public. “He’s great,” Connors said. “I don’t know why he never played live until now. He’s a lot better than he thinks he is, a lot more intuitive and resourceful than he gives himself credit for.”

There may never be another Connors solo concert, but he shows no signs of slowing down. He’s already recorded a new suite called “Forbidden Fruit” – “it has an Adam and Eve theme,” he said – and is collecting video of past performances for a DVD release. He seems to require only one thing for his playing to continue. “What hits me is anything that seems to be new, that I haven’t done before,” Connors said. “I don’t want to tread water.”

Loren Connors performs with guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama on June 15 at Tonic (107 Norfolk Street, 212-358-7501).