I understand New Globe Notes came with a 32-page booklet; could you give a brief rundown?
It has an introduction written by David Toop; a brief appraisal and overview of my work and career written by Valerio Manucci, one of the group of writer organizer and international art curators of Nero, an arts magazine based in Rome, Italy. There are examples of my graphic works, and in particular my Bluesealand project: an invented island, and some of my writing and notes. Nero co-produced the LP with NO=FI, in fact, and we launched the album in conjunction with the opening of my installation A White Shadow In The South Seas held at Teatro In Scatola in Rome.
On the topic of “last-year,” how was collaborating with Steve Gunn on Cantos de Lisboa?
I was not aware of Steve or his music before meeting him in Lisbon for the sessions. Matt at RVNG has a project of putting older musicians together with younger ones to see what happens. It seems Steve was aware of my music from the 70s (Trout Steel, etc.) and was into a collaboration.
Did y’all pick up a flow together quickly, or was it a more refined transition?
I liked Steve from the moment we met at the airport in Lisbon and we quickly bonded over music and food and wine and although I am not a finger-picking guitarist, we shared similar likes in musicians like Sun Ra and John Fahey, and that’s a broad sweep that set a kind of pallet that we were able to work with. We both decided on making a record that we might not have made alone. It covers quite a bit of musical territory.
Why the decision for vocals in Cantos de Lisboa?
Well, as I said earlier, I am in fact a singer. My live concerts always have vocals. I am a song maker, as well. I use “Maker” because I have given up ‘writing’ songs, as I did for many years and records through the 20th century, in favor of plundering the works of the American novelist Thomas Pynchon books and cutting them up in a sort of William Burroughs by-way-of Brion Gysin method to make songs. I call them Spirit Songs. I perform them over backing which is improvised — there is no choral or melodic structure preconceived before each performance, and so each performance of them is unique and different. I recently released an LP on Backwards Records in Italy of a session I did live in Beirut for Radio Lebanon, which features a version of some of them.
I work with a Charlie. Is “Song For Charlie” for everyone named Charlie? A specific Charlie? Me as the listener being Charlie?
This was an homage to Charlie Haden, who was still alive when we made the record. Charlie was famously arrested at Lisbon airport during the dictatorship when on tour with Ornette Coleman. They played Charlie’s tune “Song For Che,” a dedication to Che Guavara. The dictatorship in Portugal was of course fascist and certainly didn’t like Che. I guess today young musicians might find it odd (and unfashionable, even unfathomable) that music might have the power to get you arrested for political reasons.
You two create a more international or “world music” appeal of Americana and “country music” and blues in Cantos de Lisboa. Was this the initial intention, or did it come through during collaboration? Was it a focal point here, rather than finding yourself in typical dronier atmospheres?
Well, I speak personally here. I didn’t want to make a record that I could have made on my own. I quickly realized where Steve was coming from and I can contribute to that area, but I also wanted him to come to my side of the garden, as well. So we worked in an improvising manner just sitting around playing and tossing things into the bowl. There was no real plan, as such. Our backgrounds, musically, are very similar and so we had communal reference points to guide us.
Outside Steven Gunn, who do you find influential and/or leading the exotica, psychedelic, and/or general atmospheric music underground?
I don’t tend to listen to that kind of music. I listen to a lot of free jazz (Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman). I hardly ever listen to free, improvised music. I listen to WFMU internet radio “Give The Drummer Radio” a lot. I listen to Greek Rembetika a lot. Guitar players I like include Elliott Sharp, Henry Kaiser, Bill Frisell, and Marc Ribot. I like different stuff for different reasons. Hawaiian slack key guitarist Freddy Roulette. Generally, singers with soul and string players with a sound.
I don’t actually have any gamelan. All the gamelan sounds on my records are usually sampled metal doorbells played on an old Casio SK1 sampler keyboard or wind-chime samples played on the same.
Considering you’re on Room 40 this year, how did you and Lawrence English get in contact?
I seem to recall that Toop recommended I contact Lawrence when I was planning another tour of Australia — as someone who was looking for people to do workshops for students at Queensland University and who was organizing small concerts. Laurence and I got along well, and have remained friends and collaborators.
Were his musical craftsmanship abilities drawn upon for consultation while creating White Shadows In The South Seas?
Lawrence is a composer and lap top performer of sound. We are quite different in our approach to music and a few other things. I am more flamboyant than Lawrence. I record my music at home in my ‘studio’ (a term I use to describe whatever it is I happen to be using at any given time). I am a disciple of Lee Perry and other ‘dub’ artists who work with limited means and find ways of doing something with it. I apply this to my video and film making, as well. I think that people like Charlie Chaplin, Lee Perry, Joe Meek, Kurt Schwitters didn’t need vast amounts of money to create stuff.
Lawrence facilitated the means of releasing White Shadows In The South Seas and did a great job mastering it. The cover is particularly nice. We employed Sam Tupou, a young artist I met in Cairns, to do the outer cover art. Sam is of Samoan descent and I had seen his art in several exhibitions around Australia and New Zealand. He makes a kind of Pacific Pop Art…silk screening onto Perspex, lots a Pacific imagery, quite political, and I met him through friends in Cairns. As it happened, Sam owned a copy of the book of White Shadows. It was a travel book written in the 1920s about living in Samoa. Sam adapted the cover-art of the book for our CD release. The inside cover art are woodcut prints by Robert Gibbings, an artist who traveled in the Pacific a lot.
Can you explain how your mind shifts from the more commonly structured guitar tunes to the more avant and experimental songs?
Some years ago I decided to give up writing songs that other people might sing. I also thought there were enough songs in the world like that. I was bored with songs that were predictable, especially for me having to maybe sing them the same way, more or less, during each performance. I wanted something more improvised, and so I started collating that body of lyrics and text that I spoke about earlier by cutting up Thomas Pynchon novels. In particular, I cut up Gravity’s Rainbow and V. Both books are set mainly during World War II, when I was born. My intention and practice was and is to sing the lyrics over an improvised backing — no preconceived chords, melody, etc — and sing them atop layers of randomly played live sampled loops, usually played on guitar. Nothing pre-arranged or recorded, with no attempt at harmony. I call them Spirit Songs.
William Burroughs once said something like, “If you cut into the present you find the future,” and this has been an interesting test of that theory. The perfect improviser would of course be the musician suffering from Alzheimer’s. Trying to forget what you know can be facilitated by changing tunings as regularly as possible, not something you can do on saxophone of course. In a different tuning you can still use all your regular moves and they will come out different because all the notes are in different places. I change tunings regularly, usually right before a concert.
The titles of White Shadows In The South Seas are neither positive or negative… Was there sort of a neutrality you were trying to devise with this album?
White Shadows In The South Seas is a silent film made around 1930 that I play live music for during screenings, in fact. I have been performing live music to silent films for 25 years. I went to Australia for 23 years with a different film every year to play on the Brunswick Music Festival in Melbourne. Most of it grew out of live performance and pre-prepared pieces for the film. Although I might pre-prepare sections, I am always willing to improvise with them of course, and change them during a performance. So the CD of White Shadows In The South Seas is a version off something that might occur during a screening of the film. The whole feel of the pieces is dictated by the film. The film is a criticism of colonization and European greed.
A close and prolonged relationship with nature is an interesting thing to experience now and again. You learn to respect it as a living, breathing, self organizing, organism. Or at least we should.
Do you believe your work is primarily based upon your seasoned music making ability or natural creative innovation? Or, what’s the percentage split, would you say?
It’s a 50/50 split. I have a certain ability and confidence formed from 50 years of playing, half of which has been playing free improvised music and being involved with artists and musicians not afraid to take risks, not afraid to fail and who can even use mistakes to make something work eventually. There are no rules after all, in the end: that’s the point.
Side note: Have you played in any museums, or is there a DREAM museum you wish to play in?
I have not played in a museum, but I would like to play in the Jean Tjibaou Art Centre in New Caledonia, which was designed by Renzo Piano. One of these days. That, or the South East Asian and Polynesian Museum in Berlin or, best of all: the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.
You admitted to having “my many Hawaiian shirts in mind” when creating the loops on Rayon Hula. Do you find your personality changes when wearing different shirts?
We have winter and summer shirts. I try not to wear black background shirts apart from to funerals. My personality is a fairly stable thing unless I am hungry. Shirts have personalities of their own independent of me and mine.
Do you feel Rayon the best shirt material?
Rayon was the first manmade fiber and is made from wood pulp cellulose. It is often called fake silk. It is cool and light and very comfortable to wear.
How big is your collection of Hawaiian shirts?
…Too big for the wardrobe.
Can you send me a picture of your favorite floral shirt?
What does your “Alohabama” shirt look like?
Obama was educated and grew up on Hawaii, and so I expect his shirt and him to have certain Aloha. Most Americans have never been to Hawaii and they have no idea what a cultural treasure there is there despite every effort by Europeans and Americans, trying to wipe it out.
Does your music come from a composed stability or composure within improvisation (specifically to Rayon Hula)?
Rayon Hula was recorded when I was house-sitting a friends place in the country outside Rome. I made it on a four track cassette machine and two mini disc recorders with [the] help of a Zoomtrack sampler and looper. It was improvised in terms of me not having a plan, but not improvised in a jazz way. It was improvisation by addition, subtraction, and random choice from materials at hand. Like several Lyman CDs, my lap steel, field recordings etc. And inspiration from sources such as Gabby Pahinui, John Hassell, Emil Richards, and other exotica composers.
As all music is a version of YOU (Mike Cooper, reminder), is “Mike Ohe” a separate version of SELF within Rayon Hula?
“Ohe” means Bamboo in Hawaiian. I have a very good friend and fellow ‘Exoticist’ in Sydney, Brent Clough (a.k.a. name is Senor Bamboo) and I have a feeling it is more to with him than me.
When did you first come across Arthur Lyman’s music?
When I discovered Martin Denny’s music. Arthur played in his group before forming his own band. When we went to Hawaii in the early 1990s I didn’t realize he was still playing, solo, every Friday at one of the hotels in Waikiki. A missed opportunity.
When’s that next Cabin Records release dropping?
Rayon Hula was released initially on my Hipshot CD-R label, and won me a prestigious mention at the Ars Electronica Digital Music competition. It was picked up by Pete Fowler and Graham Erickson, who formed Cabin Records just to release it as a double 10” LP. They silk-screened the covers by hand: real fans!
Have you thought of creating a more literally-titled, direct follow-up to Rayon Hula?
I don’t do follow ups as such, but Kiribati, Glob Notes, Rayon Hula, White Shadows In The South Seas, and Fratello Mare are a series, of course. They share a concept of mystery and far away a bit, like a Robert Louis Stevenson story maybe.
What’s the next step for Mike Cooper and/or your Ambient Exotica series?
Well, I have only just finished Fratello Mare, which while writing this is not actually released yet, so I really have no idea if there will even be another one. They seem to make themselves visible — these recordings — during periods of electrical storms on islands, or some far away beach, so let’s see. I am going to Sardinia in two days time to do a project in the salt lakes near Cagliari with 20,000 flamingos to make a public art sound piece. That might lead to another exotica piece.
More about: Mike Cooper
