Although he’s been around on record since the late 60s and has played and recorded with any number of musicians with whom I’m familiar, I entirely drew a blank on the name “Mike Cooper”. Somehow, he’d managed, as near as I can recall, to fly absolutely beneath my radar. Credited with having been a key figure in the London blues revival of the 60s (his album, “Trout Steel” seems to be the one to hear), he moved on into free improv, performing with the South African ex-pats in Britain, Steve Beresford, etc. and, with Lol Coxhill and Roger Turner, formed the band, The Recedents. Glad I finally got around to hearing him.
“Metal Box” consists of six more or less improvised pieces for solo National Steel guitar (another guitarist, Tim Catlin, appears on the opening cut), although the results have been greatly augmented post-production with overdubbing, backwards tracks and so on. I admit to being a sucker for the sound of steel-bodied acoustic guitars; that rich, metallic resonance is just so juicy. The album is dedicated to the memory of John Fahey and, indeed, blues allusions are never very far away no matter how abstracted the proceedings otherwise become. A typical piece will have a huge, cavernous bed of sound, out of which scramble crotchety figures, soft pings, reverse-throbs and so on, generally centered (obliquely) around a tonal core. There are, in fact, moments when I think I’d prefer to hear just the guitar, simply played. As attractive as the baroque elaborations are themselves, they occasionally verge on clutter although there’s always a redeeming aspect, such as the plaintive moans that arise from the lonely pulse of “A Big Wave Event”. All misgivings are cast aside on the final, most overtly Faheyesque track, “Last Chant and Dance for Blind Joe Death”. Part dirge, part lament, ultimately a heartfelt if somber celebration, all the disparate elements mentioned above coalesce with grace and purpose into a wonderfully solid paean to the late, great musician.
The disc times in at on a smidgen above a half-hour, but this is a case where the “shortness” seems to be about the right size helping. Nice record.
I had a chance to hear Cooper in several contexts the other year when he was in High Zero, and I thought he was consistently solid, but not interesting enough for me to actually listen to any records. It just seems like there is a glut of prepared electric guitar music and very little gets me excited. MOR improv, good for background music while writing email.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 15, 2005 6:15 PMEr, speaking of Cooper, I highly highly recommend Chris Cooper's solo prepared guitar album. Now that's a doozy! Him, Hans Tammen, and Chris Forsyth are my favorite prepared electric guitar improvisors. So there's the "very little" that gets me excited. I also like Frith, Rowe, etc ad inf, sometimes greatly, but, you know, life is short... And other timbres call...
Does Cooper use enhancements like tapes, loops, etc. when performing live (or at least when you saw him)? He's performing in duo with Rowe this coming October (in Rome, I think). He's played with him before, but not since the early 80s, afaik. I could "hear" that such a duo might have worked back then. From the evidence in this recording, though, and from where Keith's been the last few years, it's tough to imagine them playing together effectively. But who knows?
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at May 15, 2005 6:43 PMTo be honest, I wish I could recall, but I honestly don't. Not even being able to remember exactly which year it was (!), I just pulled up my High Zero 2002 review and found these excerpts:
The table-top guitar duo of Mike Cooper and Hans Tammen joined Manley after a while and delivered a stretch of expertly played extended techniques, creating long textures of low-intensity sound events where it was often unclear which player was making which sound.
That's Ben Manley, who I thought was fabulous in several contexts. As I recall, and perhaps largely influenced by Manley's great subtlety in the beginning before he left (this was a continuous Soundshift-style format with players entering and exiting), Cooper was extremely nuanced and restrained in that duo, so I'd predict he'd be a great partner for Rowe.
Looks like I panned a quintet with Cooper, Chadbourne, Espvall-Santoleri, Toedtman, and Berndt as "a bland episode of endless pecks and plucks that never coalesced into interesting structures" but enjoyed the "clear, ringing tones of Cooper's slide guitar" and noted one really killer, but very brief lick-trading duo section between Cooper and Chadbourne.
For a truly fantastic, memorable set where Cooper contributed "table-top guitar/electronics" I went into a soup metaphor and noted:
Cooper managed to create a continuous field of complex, crackling sounds that functioned as a broth more than anything else in the set, but he was also the most generous source of unidentifiable spices.
That's about all I have, sorry. I think he had a big effects unit, like one of those blinking-lights-gizmos, and I'm thinking that he generated several layers of sound at once in that set, so live-looping is a strong possibility.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 15, 2005 7:10 PMMore info at http://hometown.aol.co.uk/cooparia/disc.html
"Does Cooper use enhancements like tapes, loops, etc. when performing live...?"
i saw him in geneva some weeks ago and he did use a fair amount of electronics (some kind of sampler, some loop- and pitchshifter-pedals and i also remember a minidisc or mp3-player with field recordings). it was a nice concert. personally i enjoyed the steel guitar/song type parts most, especially when he sung. he played a wonderful van dyke parks song whose name i don't remember.
i'm surprised to see him on a "regular release", i thought he only released self-burned cd-r's nowadays.
Posted by: tomas at May 16, 2005 3:06 AMHi folks - Thanx for the review of Metalbox. I have been releasing mostly cdrs on my Hipshot label since 1999 - however I am not averse to other labels if they show an interest. Metalbox is only one aspect of what I do musically. My latest release on Hipshot 'Reluctant Swimmer-Virtual Surfer' is more representative of what Im doing in a solo concert these days - recorded live in Rome 2003 it covers ground similar to the set that Thomas heard recently in Geneva and includes the Van Dyke Parks song. I play National acoustic and electric lap steel and sing a couple of songs (Movies Is Magic and Dolphins by Fred Neil) which are contained within improvised soundscapes mostly made from live exploration of the guitars timbral qualities, sampling/looping and digitally treating them alongside environmental field recordings that I made, on mini disc, in South East Asia. I dont see myself as a 'prepared table-top' guitarist. I play lap-steel Hawaiian guitar - difficult to do without it flat and I rarely, if ever, prepare it. Solo concerts and playing with others I try to approach differently (so dont worry Keith.) I also still sing and play acoustic Country Blues and Hawaiian music and Ambient Electronic Exotica -see 'Rayon Hula' (Hipshot 012) my recent homage to Arthur Lyman for which I have just received some accolade in the Prix Ars Electronica competition for electronic music. ( "a masterpiece of contemporary exotica" - David Toop/Wire )
A comment on the High Zero sets - I found some of those uncomfortable. A lot of what has recently been termed 'gabby chit-chat' going on I believe? Personally I find that groups larger than trios are difficult when some kind of dialogue type free- improvising is expected. I am tending to avoid that kind of encounter these days. Im happy however that the brief 'window of opportunity' to engage with Eugene was noted.
My live effects/sampling units, if you are interested, are a Zoom Sampletrack and a Kaos pad. My electric lap steel (which is Vietnamese) has built in fuzz and wha wha/tremelo units. Get in touch if you are interested in any of my past or current recorded work - I can supply it; Thanx.
I saw Mike Cooper only once live w a trio The Recedents which has been running for quite some years. Along with Cooper there are Lol Coxhill on sax and Roger Turner on drums & percussion. The performance was a bit scrappy and Turner was in his ultraspeedytrashy mode, so i couldn't really hear what Mike was doing. On that evening i bought a good solo record of him ''Finding Other Worlds- 21st Century Guitar- Improvisations'', back then his only solo guitar improvisation record released on his Hipshot label apart from Matchless release from 80-ties ''Ave They Started Yet?''. I've heard a tapes of a concert by him, Luca Venitucci and Will Guthrie which was quite good ...
Posted by: lukaz at May 16, 2005 6:18 AMInteresting that Mike has worked with Will Guthrie. That, off-hand, would strike me as a comfortable and potentially rewarding fit!
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at May 16, 2005 7:10 AMwelcome mike!
Posted by: tomas at May 16, 2005 7:29 AMHi - The Recedents seem constantly to be plagued by sound balance problems live actually but it is still one of my favourite improv. groups. We have only released I think its three records in 20 years and we have hours of unreleased live recordings starting in the early eighties - if anyone out there is interested? The records that we have released bear little relevance to our live gigs. These days we perform maybe once a year. I also have a recorded studio session of Will Guthrie, Luca and myself that we made a day or so after Will came and played a gig with us here in Rome a year or two ago. He has been here twice.
Posted by: mike cooper at May 16, 2005 2:36 PMfwiw, I remember buying (or did I steal it?) Trout Steel at the only serious record store in Heidelberg (Germany) sometime in 1970 or 71. I still have it, pops and clicks and all. Now what we all want to know is: did you really turn down an offer to join the Rolling Stones, Mike Cooper? :)
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