Mike Cooper - Cane Fire (OST) '2021

Tracks list

This is my film score for Anthony Banau-Simon’s documentary film Cane
Fire. When I made Rayon Hula in 2004 in a garden shed on a four track cassette
machine and two mini disc recorders and released it as a cd.r on my DIY Hipshot
record label I never dreamt that it would have four more lives. Its second life
was as a double ten inch vinyl lp on Cabin Records, and the third as a CD on
Lawrence English’s Room40 Records who then released its most recent
incarnation as a vinyl lp edition to celebrate its 15th anniversary. I also
hadn’t envisaged that it would also lead to film director Anthony
Banau-Simon sending me an email and asking if I might be interested in providing
the score for a documentary film he was making which was about Hawaii. He knew
Rayon Hula and other releases in my Ambient, Electronic, Exotica series of
records and thought that I might have something to contribute to his film.

“Cane Fire, the film, examines the past and present of the Hawaiian island
of Kauaʻi, interweaving four generations of family history, numerous
Hollywood productions, and troves of found footage to create a kaleidoscopic
portrait of the economic and cultural forces that have cast indigenous and
working-class residents as “extras” in their own story.”

I have been making film soundtracks to perform live to silent films for 20 plus
years. Starting in 1995 with the great German expressionist director
F.W.Murnau’s film Tabu, which was filmed in Tahiti, I began to
specifically seek out other films that featured The Pacific Ocean Islands or
films with stories set in or about them, as part of my repertoire.

My main instrument, for most of my 50 plus years as a professional musician has
been the Hawaiian guitar or Lap Steel and the first time I ever saw Tabu I
thought that it was the perfect film to play some Hawaiian guitar licks over in
a public screening. I am also a fan of the music of Arthur Lyman and Martin
Denny both of whom, in the 1950’s played something they called Exotica
music. Included in the repertoire of Martin Denny, and Les Baxter another
Exotica composer, were compositions of pieces of music that were supposedly
influenced by music from other cultures and places. In fact neither of them had
ever been to any of these places and their music had very little, if anything,
to do with the real music from the far away places that they were supposed to be
from. They had in fact invented music from invented places and invented a genre
and I wanted to make a 21st Century version. So far I have released eight
volumes in the series of my Ambient, Electronic, Exotica series, most of which
are on Room40, and this one makes nine. 

Tracklist:
1.01 - Mike Cooper - Alohabama New Mix (1:22) 
1.02 - Mike Cooper - Cane Fire Extra Rum (2:34) 
1.03 - Mike Cooper - An Aesthetic Of Birdless Calls (4:59) 
1.04 - Mike Cooper - Caught Inside More Sugar (3:16) 
1.05 - Mike Cooper - Mike Ohe New Substitute (4:30) 
1.06 - Mike Cooper - Cane Fire Four (Sakam Kava) (7:32) 
1.07 - Mike Cooper - New Cane Fire Hula (2:45) 
1.08 - Mike Cooper - New Mask Of Flesh (4:32) 
1.09 - Mike Cooper - New Cane Fire Hula Number Two (2:27) 
1.10 - Mike Cooper - The Hunter Has A Lonely Heart (3:15) 
1.11 - Mike Cooper - An Acoustic Sleepwalk (2:20)

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