Mike Cooper - Tropical Gothic '2018

Tracks list

At 76 years old, you’d think virtuoso guitarist Mike Cooper would rest on
his laurels a little, having continuously mined a seemingly bottomless well of
inspiration for almost seven decades, spanning a countless number of recordings
feeding his insatiable appetite for experimentation. For his latest album
‘Tropical Gothic’, however, he takes another sharp turn into more
abstract terrain with a dark, brooding take on Exotika and Pacific music,
sounding something like Jan Jelinek’s much loved Loop-Finding Jazz
Records as rendered by Badalamenti and Lynch, before suddenly veering off into a
tropical breeze...

Making use of his usual lap steel guitar, sampler and FX, Cooper provides a
radical inversion of his style, switching from Pacific to Atlantic ocean to
scouting out a looming deep south darkness lurking behind his usually balmy lap
steel slide guitar blues. The title itself, “Tropical Gothic”
references Cooper’s beloved areas of ‘the South’ with a
Gothic, dark, remote interplay.

On each side Cooper studies different approaches to his method of weaving guitar
and field recordings into a constant stream of sound, where he delivers chaos
and melody - not necessarily in that order. Side A is composed of shorter
pieces. Each of them offers a myriad of images and sensations, between the
enigmatic and terror (“The Pit”), joy, happiness and freedom
(“Running Naked”) or pure contemplation (“Onibaba”).

“Onibaba” runs as a fitting introduction to Side B and its 18 minute
magical piece “Lelong & Gods Of Bali”. A mix of ambient exotica,
silent film soundtrack and distorted rhythms that dance around Mike’s
guitar. It keeps reinventing and transforming itself throughout those eighteen
minutes, summing up the dexterity and muscle of Mike Cooper’s music of
the last two decades.

Incredible music from a genuine unsung hero; yungers out there resting on yr
laurels - take note.

Tracklist:
01. Mike Cooper - The Pit
02. Mike Cooper - A Mask of Flesh
03. Mike Cooper - By The River
04. Mike Cooper - Samurai
05. Mike Cooper - Shindos Blues
06. Mike Cooper - Laap Blues
07. Mike Cooper - Running Naked
08. Mike Cooper - Onibaba
09. Mike Cooper - Legong/Gods of Bali

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