Project Description

Defined as the icon of “post-everything music”, for the past 45 years the english guitarist and singer Mike Cooper has been an international music explorator that has traced, with his concerts and albums, a unique path through blues, electronics, exotic music and what remains of songwritings.
He plays lap steel guitar / electronics and sings. He is an improviser and composer, song-maker, a visual and installation artist, film and video maker and radio arts producer.
His roots are in the acoustic country blues, having him been one of the few pioneers of the ’60 “Acoustic British Blues Boom” and having him played with blues legends like Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bukka White…
Cooper has deeply explored the elastic sonic properties of the guitar, maybe more than his contemporaries like Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourne etc., driving his music towards the avanguard and improvisation attitude of musicians like Elliott Sharp, Keith Rowe, Fred Frith and Marc Ribot.
His eclectic mix of styles ranges from traditional country blues to folk, from free imporvisation to pop and original songs, from electronic music to ‘sonic gestures’, using Pacific sea’s field recordings in a style called ‘slack key’, always together with his lap steel guitar.
His favourite guitar – a National tri-cone resophonic – is played acoustic and/or electronically processed through digital outboards.
All this is what Cooper calls “Spirit Songs”.
“He calls for the listener before the musician and music for him is not a grand statement: it channels a diffused mood, not made just of sounds but of visions, incidental noises, colours, stories, traditions, lyrics, images in motion.” (Daniela Cascella in En Abime-Listening, Reading, Writing).

CASINA DEL PRINCIPE | 29_08_2014