Hipshot
His long-standinginterest in Hawaiian steel guitar, Pacific culture and exotica reachedits apex last year with the release of his Rayon Hulaalbum, a fascinating experimental work combining dizzying loops fromold Arthur Lyman records with Cooper's impressive improvisation onsteel guitar.
Cooper's new limited CD-R release on his own Hipshotlabel is a recording of an October 2003 live performance at animprovised music festival in Rome. The live set is composed of onelong, slowly evolving piece combining field recordings, real-timesampling, digital treatment and loops with live improvisation onCooper's 1920 National tri-plate lap steel guitar. It's a richlyevocative work that meanders lazily through oceanic expanses ofelectronic twitters and drones, to lush jungle landscapes filled withexotic birds and hypnotic curls of delayed steel guitar. Twice duringthe performance, all of the disparate elements gel unexpectedly intogentle vocal songs.
The first is a cover of Van Dyke Parks' "Movies IsMagic," and Cooper transforms the nostalgic ode to old Hollywood into awarm and nuanced thing of beauty, with his lazy ripples of guitar givenjust the right touch of digital processing. The other song is"Dolphins," a track by 1960s folk singer Fred Neil (though TimBuckley's haunting rendition is probably the most notable), whichCooper gives a soulful rendition against a backdrop of abstractelectronic noise and sparse, minimal guitar. At times during thelengthy experimental interludes, especially during the "Virtual Surfer"section, the dense noisy textures, animal sounds and psychedelicelectronics sound remarkably similar to Black Dice's recent Creature Comforts.
The album is incredibly rich and evocative, and as a live performance,it's utterly flawless. Cooper takes live guitar processing and samplingas his raw material, using it to build something complex andsubstantive, full of ideas and surprises, not just abandoning ithalf-formed. Everyone who thought Fennesz' last record was the best of2004 would do well to listen to Mike Cooper's Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer,to hear similar musical strategies brought to their full potential by aveteran musician in his artistic prime. As usual, the only way to get acopy of this limited CD-R is to send the artist cash inside a birthdaycard to Hipshot headquarters in Rome. Frankly, I find it incrediblethat one of the many trendy experimental record labels in Europe hasn'tsnatched up Cooper's last few albums for a wider release.
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