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Mike Cooper.
 For the past 40 years British guitarist Mike Cooper has traced a path completely his own. With his roots lying in acoustic country blues, Cooper has arguably stretched the possibilities of the guitar even more than his better known contemporary, Davy Graham. After his defining debut 'Oh Really!?' in 1969, Cooper cut five important LPs in the 1970s leaping fearlessly from pure blues to folk flecked with free jazz and improvisation, in turn arriving at the avant-garde in the late 70s. Along with a gang of renowned free-improvisers including saxophonist Lol Coxhill, he formed the Uptown Hawaiians in the 1980s and thus began expanding his oeuvre to focus on his life-long love of Pacific music and culture. 1994 marked his first visit to Australia and he has been back every year since performing a culmination of all his musics, as well as live scoring for classic silent films, installations and collaborations, all under the genre Ambient Electronic Exotica. Cooper who also runs his own CDR label Hipshot speaks via e-mail on the eve of his first visit to Adelaide.
"I come to play and see my friends and get some Oz culture. I live in Italy and it's nice to be in an English speaking culture for a while each year. Since I was here last I've been in Switzerland, France, Lebanon, Serbia, the UK and Spain."
Cooper has recorded an abundance of sounds in Australia over the years, some of which feature in his performances. "I record a lot of wild life stuff - birds, trucks, surf and sea stuff. I also spent some time with artist John Wolseley a couple of years ago in the National Park in NSW recording him working in the bush fire zone for a sound installation at the MCA. That was fun. He was dragging huge sheets of paper through these burnt out trees and bush letting them draw themselves. They were charcoal by then, you see, and made great sounds."
Cooper's sound is an eclectic mix of all the styles he has practiced over the years. He tries his best to keep it sounding fresh for himself and his audience. Thus when employing his trademark loops, almost everything is done in real time with very few, if any, pre-recorded sounds. It's a mix of the blues, folk and free jazz of his past combined with the sounds of the Pacific, mostly played on lap steel guitar in the true Hawaiian style, with Cooper's vocals sitting atop. "Pacific pop music," he says is "influenced by European music through the church. Prior to the arrival of Europeans they didn't really have harmony or string instruments."
In response to the practices of Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop (a fellow traveling music enthusiast who records and sells via his Subliminal Frequencies label various musics from Asia and the Middle East, some of it ritual and ceremonial), Cooper is dubious as to who it is best serving. "I'm not sure I agree with what the Sun City Girls do, actually. Pacific music is pretty accessible musically. If you want to buy it go on-line and buy it. It's all there. I've interviewed a lot of Hawaiian and other Pacific island musicians over the years for various folk music magazines and stuff. Let the people read what those guys have to say about what they do, and then people can go look for the music. I think sometimes it's important that people know the context in which that music is made and played. Going and looking for it was half the fun for me - the discovery."
It is evident that Cooper is all for challenging himself musically and is far from precious about which instrument he might play at any given concert. "I try to make as much of my concerts as improvised as possible. Even if I'm singing songs I try to play them different each time if I can these days. The loop is only a repetition, like in African music. It has a long history in music... I don't have an act or agenda about the music. I'm playing a house concert tonight here in Wellington in NZ. I'm going to play this really crappy guitar that's sat here in the house and see what I can do with it. A technically challenged guitar always makes you play something interesting... at least for a while."
Lenin Simos
 | Mike Cooper plays the Exeter Hotel on Tues 28 March. |
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