Member Since: 6/5/2007
Band Website: homepage.mac.com/cooparia
Band Members:MIKE COOPER
LAP STEEL GUITAR - ELECTRONICS - VOICEFor the past 40 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker, collector of Hawaiian shirts and appears on more than 60 records to date."Cooper was forging connections between folk and experimental musics long before America got New or Wierd.." (The Wire)"EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN" - is a live film and music collaboration between Australian film maker LOUISE CURHAM and MIKE COOPER -LOUISE CURHAM is an innovator of Super 8 film making whose work investigates the event of cinema. She paints, manipulates and degrades film in such a way as to enable her to interact live with musicians. One of the most innovative and exciting contemporary Australasian film artists.
"CURHAM'S work is virtually unique among contemporary abstract filmmaking due to its foregrounding of the fragility of the medium: the delicate poetry of her celluloid effacements has a discretion that is rare among artists exploring this variety of terminal cinema." Jim Knox, The 2nd OtherFilm Festival, Senses of Cinema, No. 6 2006LOUISE CURHAM is at the forefront of Australian moving image art. As well known for curating innovative expanded cinema events in non-traditional exhibition spaces as for provocative Actionist performances, Curham is highly regarded in the experimental film world for her work using "obsolete media." Her hand-worked Super 8 films reinvent the home movie medium of years gone by. - http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue66/7776http://photo
nicsmedia.net/periodical/cat/moving/http://www.tvk-bb.tv/art
-channel/artistfile/2007/07/louise_curham.htmlhttp://www.tea
chingandlearningcinema.org/louise/My duet with another Australian friend - keyboard player CHRIS ABRAHAMS - usually more associated with playing the piano with THE NECKS - here he plays DX7 while I play my acoustic National Resophonic guitar processed through my bits and pieces - this was played and recorded live and is on ROOM40 RECORDS.
Influences: Blind Boy Fuller, David Toop, Kurt Schwitters, Gabby Pahinui, Raul Ruiz, Joseph Conrad, Son House, Steve Feld, Arthur Lyman, Ellery Chun, David Carsons, Lol Coxhill, Carl Stalling, Bruce Brown, Roger Turner, Wong Kar Wai, Len Lye, Tim Buckley, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Johnson, Keola Beamer, Steve Beresford, Sam Shepard, Greg Dening, John Wolseley, Martin Denny, John Zorn, James Hamilton Patterson, Fred Neil, Peter Bakowski, Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock, Eugene Chadbourne, Christopher Doyle, Louise Curham, Max Eastley, Keith Rowe, John Pilger, Nick Bantock, Tom Phillips, Tau Moe, Richard Nunns, Tapies, Captain Cook, Skip James, John Hassell, John Fahey, Van Dyke Parks, Freddie Roulette, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Esquivel, Henry Kaiser, Derek Jarman, Ry Cooder, Junior Brown, Dziga Vertov, Robert Flaherty, Robert Louise Stevenson, F.W.Murnau, J.G.Ballard, James Michener, Cecil Taylor, The Beachboys, Takemizu, Alvin Curran, Blind Willy Johnson, Harpo Marx, Lee Perry, The Pacific Ocean, South East Asia, Tiki Art, Eisenstein, Einstein, Chris Marker, the beach.
Sounds Like: All of the above.
Record Label: HIPSHOT - http://www.myspace.com/hipshotrecords
Type of Label: Indie