MIKE COOPER
- GUITAR /LAP STEEL GUITAR/ ELECTRONICS/ VOCALS
For the past 40 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker, collector of Hawaiian shirts and appears on more than 60 records to date.
"Cooper was forging connections between folk and experimental musics long before America got New or Wierd.." (The Wire)
---THE RECEDENTS - MIKE COOPER / LOL COXHILL / ROGER TURNER - The Recedents must be one of the longest established improvising units in the UK, having been formed in 1982 as one of the earliest electro-acoustic groups, and having worked together at (sometimes infrequent) intervals ever since.
The unique soprano sax sound of Lol Coxhill is at the heat of the group, while guitarist Mike Cooper plays both acoustically and with electronic interventions. The trio is completed by Roger Turner, one of the most sensitive and responsive percussionists currently active on either side of the Atlantic.
"EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN" - is a live film and music collaboration between Australian film maker LOUISE CURHAM and MIKE COOPER - >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LOUISE CURHAM is an innovator of Super 8 film making whose work investigates the event of cinema. She paints, manipulates and degrades film in such a way as to enable her to interact live with musicians. One of the most innovative and exciting contemporary Australasian film artists.
"CURHAM'S work is virtually unique among contemporary abstract filmmaking due to its foregrounding of the fragility of the medium: the delicate poetry of her celluloid effacements has a discretion that is rare among artists exploring this variety of terminal cinema." Jim Knox, The 2nd OtherFilm Festival, Senses of Cinema, No. 6 2006 >>>>>>>
LOUISE CURHAM is at the forefront of Australian moving image art. As well known for curating innovative expanded cinema events in non-traditional exhibition spaces as for provocative Actionist performances, Curham is highly regarded in the experimental film world for her work using "obsolete media." Her hand-worked Super 8 films reinvent the home movie medium of years gone by. - http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue66/7776
http://photonicsmedia.net/periodical/cat/moving/
http://www.tvk-bb.tv/art-channel/artistfile/2007/07/louise_curham.html
http://www.teachingandlearningcinema.org/louise/
My duet with another Australian friend - keyboard player CHRIS ABRAHAMS - usually more associated with playing the piano with THE NECKS - here he plays DX7 while I play my acoustic National Resophonic guitar processed through my bits and pieces - this was played and recorded live and is on ROOM40 RECORDS.
A TRYSTERO SYSTEM gig with VJ GRAYSON COOKE in Wellington/New Zealand in february 2009. TRYSTERO SYSTEM has existed in various forms since the mid eighties and is always a duo of myself and one other person. Dedicated to free improvisation over dance beats of some kind.
Below is an excerpt from our concert in BUNDABERG UNIVERSITY in QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA in April 2009
Influences
Blind Boy Fuller, David Toop, Kurt Schwitters, Gabby Pahinui, Raul Ruiz, Joseph Conrad, Son House, Steve Feld, Arthur Lyman, Ellery Chun, David Carsons, Lol Coxhill, Carl Stalling, Bruce Brown, Roger Turner, Wong Kar Wai, Len Lye, Tim Buckley, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Johnson, Keola Beamer, Steve Beresford, Sam Shepard, Greg Dening, John Wolseley, Martin Denny, John Zorn, James Hamilton Patterson, Fred Neil, Peter Bakowski, Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock, Eugene Chadbourne, Christopher Doyle, Louise Curham, Max Eastley, Keith Rowe, John Pilger, Nick Bantock, Tom Phillips, Tau Moe, Richard Nunns, Tapies, Captain Cook, Skip James, John Hassell, John Fahey, Van Dyke Parks, Freddie Roulette, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Esquivel, Henry Kaiser, Derek Jarman, Ry Cooder, Junior Brown, Dziga Vertov, Robert Flaherty, Robert Louise Stevenson, F.W.Murnau, J.G.Ballard, James Michener, Cecil Taylor, The Beachboys, Takemizu, Alvin Curran, Blind Willy Johnson, Harpo Marx, Lee Perry, The Pacific Ocean, South East Asia, Tiki Art, Eisenstein, Einstein, Chris Marker, the beach.
Phantom Island from an interview by Tam Patton for Xochi Magazine - 2007 Australia.
“There are islands that have been believed to exist, islands which have appeared on maps and have even had expeditions mounted to locate or conquer them, yet they have still evaded our observation. Some are eventually established as imaginary; daemonic. Others are seen only on old maps and charts, disappearing in more modern depictions, dismissed as mistakes. Others still are unsuccessfully sought for decades, and dismissed as fanciful or mythic, and then embarrassingly found in plain view, under another, more familiar name. Mike Cooper is perhaps one of these islands. Born in England in 1942, his 40-plus years of constant re-invention, experimentation and quiet genius in a myriad of musical styles has evaded categorization, perhaps as a side-effect of having been almost completely ignored by history. Encompassing Blues, Folk, Roots music, Electronica, Jazz, Exotica / Lounge, Dance, Noise, Modern Composition or Improvisation (amongst others), Cooper’s expansive remit blasts orthodox categorization into the befuddled librarian’s realm where it belongs.”
For more go to http://web.mac.com/cooparia and also http://www.myspace.com/hipshotrecords
Our song 'Yellow Suit' is on the first FRIEND VOTE Indie Top 100 Chart on this week. Maybe our friends can help us get no 1 for Monday. Vote for AMYCANBE at http://www.myspace.com/indietop100 Until again, all the best, Amycanbe
Yes!!! We are in PEACE, compilation for Amnesty International out next January, along with other great names. See our blog section for infos. Cheers!!
I miss you too. If Maria is in London, it will be great to see her at Cafe Oto -- that's on Sunday the 8th. Where are you going to be in December -- Cafe Oto or the U.S? I hope all is well with you.
....FRIZZ RECORDS is proud to announce our second official LP release...
"Modern Mediaeval" is the third LP from singer-songwriter DAVID GARSIDE, and the first to receive the full Frizz Records vinyl treatment. It’s also clearly the most fully-realised statement of his distinctive vision so far…
It’s an easy route to locate David in the tradition of his ‘classic’ influences (McCartney, Nick Drake, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, The Beach Boys, Love, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Dexy’s…), but there are few songwriters working today that have absorbed these influences so fully, and arrived at a mature style as David has…
This is ’singer-songwriter’ music in the sense that it’s focus is on song-craft and the unfolding of the lyrical vision of a single individual, but if so then it’s definitely at the sophisticated end of the scale (’progressive’ if that term isn’t too loaded…), filed alongside ‘Bryter Layter’, ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns’, ‘Pretzel Logic’ or ‘Surf’s Up’...another FRIZZ RECORDS instant classic!
"Modern Mediaeval" can be downloaded from the iTunes Store
The album is also available on heavyweight vinyl LP, or on Digipack CD from www.FrizzRecords.com & all good retailers
....FRIZZ RECORDS is proud to announce our first official LP release...
"It's Not The Wand, It's The Magic" is the debut release from AUGUST, the London based band centred around the songwriting partnership between vocalist VEDINA MOSE and multi-instrumentalist / producer RAPHAEL MANN (MR HUDSON / JOY JOSEPH / ART TERRY), with master drummer CLEAN CUT MARK and clarinetist / vocalist MAREE CHOIE completing the core line-up, and a supporting cast including ART TERRY (keyboards), SHOHEI KAWAMOTO (AKA Japanese producer Baraki, Bass clarinet, soprano sax and flute), and KAI HOFFMAN (French horn)
Always an act that juggled a diverse set of influences, the album has been compared to artists as diverse as KATE BUSH, PRINCE, DE LA SOUL, SLY STONE, MADLIB, SERGE GAINSBOURG and THE DELFONICS, for its concoction of wild experimentation and traditional song craft, organic production and futuristic electronic touches, funk bass & drums and jazz & orchestral references, infectious melodies and lyrical flights of fancy...with nods towards classic soul, JB funk, Studio One, 60s pop, psychedelia, left field hip hop, new wave, doo wop, tropicalia, high life, & avant garde jazz, without any song ever fitting squarely into any of those categories...new music, basically...and an instant classic!
"It's Not The Wand, It's The Magic" can be downloaded now from the iTunes Store
The album is also available on heavyweight vinyl LP in a sumptuous gatefold sleeve, or on Digipack CD from www.FrizzRecords.com & all good retailers
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