TMT-saint Jonathan Dean introduced me to Mike Cooper through a video link a few years ago, and since then, I’ve grown a large interest in the steel-guitar slides, typhooned loops, and blooming atmospheres that Cooper tour-guides in his Ambient Electronic Exotica series. As all the works in this series are rooted to a visual element, followed by more literal or cultural influences, his most recent album on Room 40, Fratello Mare (intended as a new soundtrack for the movie, Fratello Mare), traverses grounds sonically similar to the rest within the series.
However, as Mike Cooper released Cantos de Lisboa on RVNG Int.’s FRKWYS series — paired with the delightful Steve Gunn — I began to notice the other, more popularly outstanding (according to the depth of his discography) framing of music.
Below, Cooper takes us on a journey through the process of his ray-of-sunshine antics, including finding a kangaroo-toe totem, a lovely hallucinogenic drink, 20,000 flamingos, and the name of every Hawaiian shirt he owns… maybe. Onward into the weather.
Do you live in Italy?
I do. I have lived in Rome for 28 years.
Are there special places you like to play there throughout the year?
I play now and again at Dal Verme, a club that is connected to NO=FI Records, and at Fanfulla (another club). Also at Blutopia, a record shop that hosts small, but significant concerts, occasionally, usually with touring musicians who have a night free.
Was your recent trip to Spain music-related?
I am there writing this. I had one concert at a small two-day festival called Pop Al Carrer, south of Valencia, and a radio interview in Barcelona, but it was mainly a holiday trip. I had to fly to Poland in the middle of it for one day for a concert together with Michael Chapman. I only agreed to do it because I hadn’t seen him for about 25 years, maybe more.
What does your breath smell like right now?
At the moment: …of rum.
Do you believe or have you experienced seeing your music affect life outside of humans (plants, animals, fish, etc.)?
No, but the other way around, maybe, yes. I did a monthlong residency on Pulau Ubin, a small island near Singapore a couple of years ago, and I found that to be a very profound experience. I learned that trees and plants in the jungle can support each other through root and fungal networks. They also have the ability to attract animals or insects that will kill parasites that attack them. The daytime life in the jungle is very different to the nighttime. Humans have very bad night vision as you know. These thoughts and musings affected me and my music. 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.
How much of your noises are found-sound or synthetic?
I don’t use the word “noise.” The word “noise” insinuates to me something annoying. I use sounds, which I think appropriate to whatever I am doing. Some people might find them annoying of course, and call them “noise.” I rarely use synthetic sounds. Most sounds on my records and live concerts are generated by my guitar, often processed, sampled and looped, or I use my own field recordings.
Is the process of making music relaxing for you, or is the final product what you’re looking toward for relaxation?
Making music is a way of getting through life; a pleasurable way. I rarely listen to records that I make until a long time after their release. Live playing is the place where real music happens. These days I try to make all my records live.
Is there a mental practice you utilize within your daily life?
Other than cooking, no. I approach cooking as a form of meditation and improvisation.
Do you cook to music?
I tend to listen to WFMU internet radio when I am cooking, it saves me having to chose or put on a CD or record.
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.
Has there been a profound PURCHASE (instrument, technology, misc) you’ve made throughout your career that has changed your music style?
I own and still play the second guitar I ever bought in 1958. A 1932 National resophonic guitar, which has really defined everything I do on guitar. It has a distinct voice and many timbres to explore, even as a percussion instrument, its body being made of metal. They are very special guitars, originally built for Hawaiian musicians; they were also favored by American Afro Blues players, as well. A tough and beautiful-looking instrument.
It feels like there’s more of a mirage-esque theme to your newest album, Fratello Mare. I specifically hear/see this in “Secret Mexican Beach.” Did you have any intention of sculpting sound VISIONS on this album, more-so than sound EXPERIENCE?
All of these records in my Ambient Exotica series are cinematic, and all of them are featured as live sound tracks, either for silent films or as soundtracks for screening of my own films or videos. All of my work is linked together either intentionally or eventually. I am a recycler of my own work… never throw anything away.
Are the titles in your discography related to your Ambient Exotica series? Just for information’s sake, as I believe most of this interview dives into those territories, mostly.
The Ambient Electronic Exotica series is Kiribati, Globe Notes, Rayon Hula, White Shadows In The South Seas, and Fratello Mare.
Moving forward with some Fratello Mare questions, is “A House In Bali” based on the book?
Yes. A House In Bali is a book written by Colin McPhee, who was an American composer who went to live in Bali the 1930s and wrote what is still one of the definitive books on Balinese Gamelan music. He adapted many Gamalan tunes for piano and his book describes his time living in Bali and learning from the masters.
Aside from the opening song on Fratello Mare, when’s the last time you passed bamboo?
I last passed Senor Bamboo about two years ago. Other than that I often pass bamboo at my local Tiki bar.
If there is (or had been) an actual “Pacific Log,” how long would it be by this point?
There is indeed, but it is not mine. It belongs to Louis Becke who was a Pacific trader in the early 20th century who turned journalist and writer of fiction based on his experiences in the islands. I created a Facebook page for him, and I have a lot of his books, including Notes From My Pacific Log.
In context of the “New Gamelan” sounds, how would you describe YOUR new gamelan set-up/kit, physically?
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.
Do you plan on touring the Fratello Mare’s release?
I don’t really tour records, specifically. Fratello Mare might get some airing if we can arrange some screenings of the film somewhere, I guess. I have an exotica ‘set’ I sometimes do by request, which covers areas of music similar to that on the Ambient Electronic Exotica series of CDs and records, usually with a video or film of mine, as well. I made a 50-minute super eight film called Planet Pacific~Pieces Of Heaven some years ago and I sometimes play live ‘exotica’ music to that.
I am a disciple of Lee Perry and other ‘dub’ artists who work with limited means and find ways of doing something with it.
From last year’s New Global Notes, Is “Yu Yangs Pond” based on the etching by Fred Williams?
“Yu Yangs Pond” is in West Australia. I drove through it once on a trip to Broome in the north. An event for me because I don’t actually drive, but the road is so straight and the traffic so infrequent that anyone can drive that road as long as you are not blind. I found a kangaroo’s middle toe by the side of the road. The rest was probably eaten by dingos. It’s on my studio table in a jar of red ochre from the same spot.
Have you ever found a pearl in “the wild?”
Many! Broome is a pearling town way up north there, and it’s pretty wild. One of Australia’s best bands, The Pigram Brothers live there — pearls in themselves — seven brothers of Aboriginal, Irish, and Philippine descent. The other pearl was a musician named Seaman Dan who is from the Torres Straights Islands situated between Northern Queensland and Papua. He was a pearl diver for most of his working life and a part-time musician, until he made his first record at the age of 70 singing and playing songs, most of which he wrote. I played on one of his records and in his band at the National Folk Festival in Canberra one year.
If you had to explain the meaning of the word “Tebutinnang,” would it reflect a tangible or intangible meaning?
It is a girl’s name and means ‘movement of clouds’ in Kiribati language.
Are your vocals in New Globe Notes hidden on purpose, or am I tripping?
I am in fact a singer by preference. These ambient records are a side street along the road I travel, although by no means secondary one. I am attracted to slide or lap steel guitar because of its vocal quality and ability to mimic the human voice.
Who is “Sakam Kava?”
I have forgotten the meaning in the Kiribati language, but in Macedonian, Sakam means “Love.” Kava, as I remember, is a hallucinogenic drink prepared from the roots of the pepper tree in Polynesia. Oliver Sacks wrote a nice essay about drinking Kava. It completely paralyzes your whole body, but leaves your mind brilliantly clear and bright. It is a ritual ceremonial drink.
Did NO=FI Recordings reach out to you for New Globe Notes?
NO=FI wanted a record and I would eventually like to get all of my original Hipshot CD-R recordings released either on vinyl or on CD (or whatever other format comes along). No one was particularly interested in releasing anything of my work for a period of almost 10 years, and so I released my music on my own. I made 30 CD-Rs in 10 years since 1999. The Ambient Tropicalia release, Rayon Hula, Globe Notes and Kiribati were part of those CD-Rs. Kiribati will come out on vinyl later in 2015 as well.
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
