MIKE COOPER
BOOKING CONTACTS ….
mike cooper
cooparia@mac.com ….. Mike Cooper
“The icon of post-everything music” – Lawrence English
(::Room40::)
For Sounds Click On The Bandcamp Links Provided
Mike Cooper is an international artist working with sound, music, video, photography and other visual media both traditional and digital. He has been active professionally for 60 years and has produced over 80 solo recordings and almost as many collaborative editions with other artists.
He plays lap steel guitar and sings, he is an improviser and composer, song-maker, a visual and installation artist; film and video maker and radio arts producer. Currently based in Valencia in Spain.
Uneasy Easy Listening
Ambient, Electronic, Exotica
SLOW MOTION LIGHTNING – ROOM40 C.D.
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/slow-motion-lightning
The record was inspired by a sweltering summer and the surreal, psychedelic Guyanese literature of Wilson Harris (such as The Guyana Quartet and My Bones and My Flute).
“Cooper’s talent lies not just in his technical prowess but in his ability to make sound feel alive. “The Groan That Sometimes Splashed Out Of A Bucket Of Sound” is as evocative as its title, with metallic clinks and reverberations creating a slow-moving storm of dissonance and beauty. “The Spider Of Dawn Had Appended And The Moon Had Far Descended” spins an intricate web of haunting melodies that seem to shimmer under moonlight. But the centerpiece might be the sprawling “Like Stars Of Gold Painted On The Blue Skeleton Of Crumpled Heaven”. Its expansive sonic palette stretches across time and space, marrying the tactile (the rum bottles and flasks) with the ethereal.” – more at https://chaindlk.com/reviews/12466
Live concert video link from Bratislava
https://youtu.be/XL1N_ysXT3M?si=T_tIU-L9o1tM68fo
all background videos in concert by Mike Cooper
“Incomparable bluesman Mike Cooper marks over 50 years of deadly cool and restless experimentation with a masterful melange of free jazz, Oceanic, and Hawaiian inspirations in his umpteenth hallucinatory collage. More than half a century since his 1969 debut, Mike Cooper’s music remains strikingly fresh and in a timeline of its own on ‘Black Flamingo’. The album’s vitality is largely due to Cooper’s role as a consummate collaborator, as he weaves in a panoply of UK peers and remote jams that harmonise with, as well as disrupt, his eternally imaginative and innovative style.”- Boomkat.
“Really can’t think of many other 80 year olds… whose music still feels somehow relevant thru it’s sheer, expressive abstraction nowadays. And this recording proves Mike Cooper is pretty special.” – Boomkat Review of Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer
LIVE CONCERT VIDEO FROM MILAN 2025
https://www.ursss.com/artist/mike-cooper/
When A Screaming Comes Across The Sky
Room40 Digital release.
“5-track, 30-minute record draws its title and thematic framework from the opening line of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow (“A screaming comes across the sky…”) exploring the historical legacy of V1/V2 rockets. Assembled in Valencia, Spain, in June 2025 against the backdrop of ongoing Middle East conflicts, Cooper notes that while others express rage or anger loudly, his response is quiet.“
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/when-a-screaming-comes-across-the-sky
A LIVE CONCERT REVIEW FROM BRISTOL U.K.
“But then there was Mike Cooper, hat-shadowed face, Hawaiian shirt and a steel guitar wired into a table of electronic business. He began raga-like, an unhurried deconstructed blues-boogie, his fingers nimble across the gadgets stretching and overdriving the sound, letting new elements evolve before sweeping them aside and derailing the music into something else. Grabbing a lyric sheet from a pile on the floor he delivered songs like The White Ship’s Silence, moulding the soundscape to fit them into what was a single stream of consciousness. It was a truly riveting performance, so much was happening so fast at times, yet nothing out of place or effortful…. making it all the more important to recognise a master musician like Mike Cooper who has spent nearly 60 years doing just that and remaining ahead of the curve.” – The Old England Bristol – Tony Benjamin – 2018.
“His eclectic attitude has often embraced the idea of re-representing a multitude of cultural references, through a very particular way of mixing elements and fantasies into a visionary model that goes beyond the simple idea of multiculturalism” – NERO magazine – Valerio Mannucci.
TROPICAL GOTHIC- CLICK LINK BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO
https://youtu.be/4EXtncJ_MVQ?si=XXs2rHuk9eMYBgQg
“Mike Cooper is a world traveler, and this time around, he’s moored his boat in the bayous of the Deep South. But Cooper being Cooper, the South looks a little different than it does in life or in movies or in folklore, and sometimes it blurs into Bali and ancient Japan as if the whole world was a vast neural net made of bits of data that drifted errantly across the earth’s surface. It’s not “Southern gothic” but Tropical Gothic. He casts his net more widely than most.” – Spectrum Culture.
“On each side Cooper studies different approaches to his method of weaving guitar and field recordings into a constant stream of sound, where he delivers chaos and melody – not necessarily in that order. Side A is composed of shorter pieces. Each of them offers a myriad of images and sensations, between the enigmatic and terror (“The Pit”), joy, happiness and freedom (“Running Naked”) or pure contemplation (“Onibaba”).” – Boomkat review.
“Cooper, now in his eighties, is making the most adventurous music of his life… incredibly rich and evocative, and as a live performance, it’s utterly flawless. Cooper takes live guitar processing and sampling as his raw material, using it to build something complex and substantive, full of ideas and surprises, not just abandoning it half-formed.“ – Jonathan Dean – Brainwashed.
STOCHASTIC PARROT – ROOM40 C.D. – 2026
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/stochastic-parrot
https://www.sentireascoltare.com/recensioni/mike-cooper-stochastic-parrot/
“ Cooper’s music, in any of its forms, seems drunk on the intermingling of folk traditions, searching for a spot between them all that renders the strange familiar and vice versa. He is an improvisatory musician, one who generates his music in sheets, loops, and layers, and he seems to accrete these found-sound albums like a spider spins silk, or a vine grows pumpkins. They just appear, fattened and ripe, the fruits of his memories, travels, and idiosyncrasies.” – Pitchfork.
FRATELLO MARE – ROOM40 VINYL 12inch L.P.
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/fratello-mare
Sound Colour Vibration: “The hypnotic and mystic nature of Mike Cooper’s forthcoming LP, Fratello Mare, is unparalleled, sourced from his infamous experimental approach to the lap steel, exotic organic and electronic percussive overwashes, expansive guitar and synthetic grid work.”
Beautiful new album from Mike Cooper, out now via Room40 Mike Cooper returns with another wondrous album bringing together his unique lap steel playing with stylistic influences that frame him somewhere between the exotica of Martin Denny, the modulated electronic-jazz of Move D’s Conjoint, and Alice Coltrane’s spiritual evocations.” Boomkat.
RAFT – room40 – vinyl 12 inch l.p.
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/raft
“Following on from Fratello Mare and White Shadows Of The South Seas, two previous albums on Lawrence English’s Brisbane-based Room40 label, and both dedicated to seafaring in this part of the world, Mike Cooper’s latest album Raft is dedicated to the solo voyager, of which he is an eminent example. Based in Rome, he is an intrepid musical voyager, both in terms of musical genres, starting with blues, gravitating to jazz, folk and experimental music, as well as physically, having travelled to most parts of the world with his guitar, recording equipment and electronics”. Tony Mitchell – Cyclic Defrost
UNDER THE VOLCANO – BANDCAMP DIGITAL ONLY RELEASE
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-under-the-volcano
Tradition and Innovation in Lap Steel Guitar Playing.
“Very dark and clear with an onshore wind, and the sound of surf you couldn’t see, deep in the spring night the summer stars were overhead, presage of summer, and the stars bright; clear and dark, and the moon had not risen; a beautiful strong clean onshore wind, and then the waning moon rising over the water, and later, inside the house, the roar of unseen surf beating in the night” – from Under The Volcano by Malcom Lowry.
My homage to Joseph Kekuku, Tau Moe and Sam Ku West who together taught me everything I know about lap steel guitar playing and to the islands and people of Hawaii.
RAYON HULA
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/rayon-hula-15th-anniversary-edition
Rayon Hula was originally a c.d.r on my Hipshot label in a limited edition, 2004. The same year it was picked up by Cabin Records and released as a double 10 inch vinyl version. In 2019 Room40 records released a 15th year anniversary 12 inch vinyl edition.
David Toop in The Wire called it “a masterpiece of contemporary exotica.”
Jonathan Dean on Brainwashed praised it as “the first truly sincere attempt at 21st Century exotica… a cool breeze of an album, experimental but eminently listenable”
Recognized by the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005 as a seminal vision of expanded exotica, the album attained a strong cult status before its expanded remaster on Lawrence English’s Room40 label.
SPIRIT SONGS
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-spirit-songs-live-four-volumes
I started my musical journey as a singer in the late 1950s. First playing skiffle, a mixture of American folk songs and blues, and then with my first band The Blues Committee. I continued into the 1970’s as a singer songwriter and then, during the 1980’s, in the context of free improvised music and singing I decided there were, and still are, others doing it much better than I could and I refrained. Now however my vocals are frequently featured in my solo performances in the shape of my ‘Spirit Songs’.
Spirit Songs – Songs produced using methods similar to William Burroughs and British artist Tom Phillips’ techniques of cut-up or random selection and/or elimination of texts, working in particular with Thomas Pynchon’s two novels Gravity’s Rainbow and V. When performing Spirit Songs live both the sung melody and instrumental accompaniment are freely improvised rendering each performance totally unique. No fixed melody or harmony is intended. Everything is random.
“The unexpected aspect is to be expected at all times”
Below: a four volume set of live digital recordings of Spirit Songs performed both solo and with other musicians in different environments. I never practise singing and the only time Spirit Songs are recorded is in concert. An exploration of song form and its presentation in the context of improvised music in its various forms.
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not”.
(Shakespeare – The Tempest)
Every performance totally unique.
WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/white-shadows-in-the-south-seas
“Gorgeous longform work from veteran English experimentalist Mike Cooper capturing the balmy climes of Oceania aboard his slide guitar on ‘White Shadows In The South Seas’. It follows his ongoing aural expeditions to this region since the late ’80s and could be considered a direct descendant of his celebrated ‘Rayon Hula’ album and ‘Beach Crossings – Pacific Footprints’ commission, transposing a long and potted history of blues and avant guitar experience to a dreamy, distant headspace coloured with rich tropical rhythms and field recordings.”
White Shadows In The South Seas … started life as a soundtrack to be performed live with a screening of the 1928 silent film by W.S. Van Dyke. My soundtrack became a c.d. which was released originally on Room40 records in Australia. It was later released as a double vinyl set playing at 45rpm by Sacred Summit records in the U.K.
It took on another life when Proposte Sonore in Rome invited me to make an installation around the title. I responded by installing 50 Hawaiian shirts; 50 Exotica and Hawaiian Music record covers; four hand painted Tikis on board; several pages from my hand illustrated book ‘Island Songs’; three images of my decorated Ukuleles that were part of the Hula Dreams tri-annual exhibition that I helped instigate in Sydney, Australia; a collection of ephemera called ‘Objects For Forgotten Rituals’; several videos and a super eight film of mine projected on to three overlaid mosquito nets creating a three dimensional walk through image; and several piles of ‘beach rubbish’ laid out on Pacific Island printed cloth on the floor; the walls were covered in silent film posters, some of which I had performed live music for. A soundscape of tropical insects and birds played for the duration.
Live Music For Silent Films
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-tabu
For the past 25 years I have composed/improvised and performed worldwide at festivals, cinemas and other venues with Live Music For Classic and Contemporary Silent Films. Among them F.W.Murnau’s Tabu; W.S.Van Dyke’s White Shadows In The South Seas; Aelita by Yakov Protazanov; Legong by Henry de La Falaise; l’Inhumaine by Marcel L’Herbier.; A Page Of Madness by Teinosuke Kinugasa; and Fratello Mare by Folco Quilici, and Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico scored for a small orchestra.
https://www.cooparia.com/current-groups/que-viva-mexico-orchestra/
https://www.cooparia.com/projects/silent-movies/aelita/
https://www.cooparia.com/projects/silent-movies/linhumaine/
https://www.cooparia.com/projects/silent-movies/legong-dance-of-the-virgins/
https://www.cooparia.com/projects/silent-movies/white-shadows-in-the-south-seas/
“The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one great thing.”
Video Art and Short Films
https://www.youtube.com/@cooparia2/videos
On my YouTube Channel there are over 40 examples of my video and super eight film works of various lengths including a 50 minute video titled Hotel Hibiscus City downloadable onto devices in 14 parts – and a link to my 2026 video Silver Strings Hollow Bamboo which was premiered live at Cafe Oto in London with myself, David Toop and Max Eastley performing a live score.
extract below
https://youtu.be/jg4xn1GX2ic?si=zsXLdPAoagyeDt7H
‘Island Gardens’ is an on-going multi screen short video installation project connecting small island cultures around the world by exploring their sound, story, myth, magical thinking and visual beauty. Filmed in Bali, East Timor, Guadaloupe, Singapore, Hong Kong, Greece, and other exotic locations. I feature many of the videos in my live performances as a backdrop. They exist as a double dvd box set which includes postcards and posters of relevant material.
https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/merch/mike-cooper-island-gardens-double-dvd-box
A view of my Island Gardens video installation in Marseille
Son De Plateaux – 8 @ GRIM Marseille
PhotoGRAFIX – book of photographs
https://edizionikappabit.com/volume/mike-cooper-photografix/
Limited Edition Hardcover Book
160 pages Limited Edition Hard Cover Book printed on high quality 170 g/m2 coated paper, containing over 70 full color pics and other original material (including author’s writings and a foreword by Lawrence English). Thanks to Kappabit’s exclusive QR-BOOK™ technology, this transmedia object is enhanced with 2 full album download links and 4 previously unreleased videos.
These photoGRAFIX were all taken on an analogue Olympus camera with real film. Some of them are collaged – hence the GRAPHIX bit in the title. I bought the camera,an Olympus MJU-11 35 mm, when it was first issued in 1995. It has since become a cult collectable object. My first photographs with it were around Melbourne and Auckland. The book includes an essay on my work by Lawrence English.
DIGITAL GRAPHICS, POST CARD ART AND COLLAGE
https://www.cooparia.com/projects/post-card-art/
I have been exhibiting my digital and collage graphics recently as A3 Giclee Prints. Contact me for prices and availability.
Recent exhibitions in Rome, Brussels, San Bernardino (Switzerland)
BLACK AND WHITE ‘CRYSTAL GRAPHICS’
All these photographs were taken with an iPhone utilising an ‘intervention’ between the subject and the lens. No digital manipulation was involved.
ARTIST RESIDENCIES
2017 – Venice Biennale – with Pat Thomas, Mazen Kerbaj and Dr.Truna.
2017– Asiatopia – Koh Lanta Island Thailand
2017 – Tura New Music – Perth Western Australia
2016 – Artist in residence at SEA Heraklion Crete.
2015 – Artist residency AIR Antwerp (Belgium)
2015 – Artist in residence Cagliari (Sardinia) Capitale Italiana Della Cultura.
2013 – Artist in residence Lamma Island (Hong Kong)
2013 – Artist in residence Singapore.
2013 – Artist in residence Syros (Greece) for Syros Sound Meeting.
2012 – Artists in residence Pulau Ubin (Singapore) for The Artists Village.
INSTALLATIONS
2008 – Some Sound Point Of View – short films and video @ GRIM Marseille.
2013 – Beach Peace – Lamma Island-Hong Kong.
2014 – A White Shadow In The South Seas @ Teatro in Scatola-Rome.
2014 – Island Gardens video collection @ GRIM Marseille.
2015 – Island Gardens video collection @ AIR Antwerp.
2015 – Island Songs illustrated lyrics @ AIR Antwerp.
2015 – Glass Love @ Swiss Institute-Rome
2015 – Flirting With Flamingos @ Stazione Ferrovia di Cagliari-Sardinia.
“THE LEAST KNOWN OF THE LEAST KNOWN”
“There are islands that have been believed to exist, islands which have appeared on maps and have even had expeditions mounted to locate or conquer them, yet they have still evaded our observation. Some are eventually established as imaginary; daemonic. Others are seen only on old maps and charts, disappearing in more modern depictions, dismissed as mistakes. Others still are unsuccessfully sought for decades, and dismissed as fanciful or mythic, and then embarrassingly found in plain view, under another, more familiar name. Mike Cooper is perhaps one of these islands. Born in England in 1942, his 40-plus years of constant re-invention, experimentation and quiet genius in a myriad of musical styles has evaded categorization, perhaps as a side-effect of having been almost completely ignored by history. Encompassing Blues, Folk, Roots music, Electronica, Jazz, Exotica / Lounge, Dance, Noise, Modern Composition or Improvisation (amongst others), Cooper’s expansive remit blasts orthodox categorization into the befuddled librarian’s realm where it belongs.”
‘The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World’. Wittgenstein.
SOME PAST INTERNATIONAL CONCERTS, SCREENINGS, INSTALLATIONS ETC.
Blow Out Festival Oslo; Tectonics Festival Glasgow; Venice Biennale Italy; Venice College Of Fashion; Onassis Centre Athens; Syros International Film Festival Greece; MAXXI Museum Rome; Museum Of Old and New Art (MONA) Tasmania Australia; Institute of Modern Art Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; Experimental Arts Foundation Adelaide; Esplanade Singapore; SAM Singapore Art Museum; National Arts Centre Tokyo; Metropolis Cinema Beirut; Beirut Arts Centre; University of Hong Kong; Honolulu Academy of Arts; Institute Of Contemporary Arts London; Across Asia Film Festival Auditorium Rome; Venice Biennale; GRIM Marseille; Athens Video Arts Festival, Greece; Japan New Media Festival Tokyo; Australian Film Festival Berlin; Casa Encendida Madrid; OUT Festival Lisbon, Portugal; Maria Matos Theatre Lisbon; Irtijal Festival Beirut, Lebanon; Brunswick Music Festival Melbourne; Nicklesdorf Jazztage Austria; Festival CABLE Nantes France; Wellington International Jazz Festival New Zealand; Hula Dreams Triennial Sydney; Teatro In Scatola Rome; Cafe Oto London; Cinematek Oslo Norway; London College of Communication London; Kings College London; University of Bath England; Southern Cross University Lismore Australia; Griffith University Brisbane Australia; University of Barcelona; DocLab Hanoi; Teatro Civico Cagliari; and many other smaller but equally significant venues.
Some recent publications that mention The Work or Shirts
“Hail the Happy Accident – an Interview with Mike Cooper”
http://www.criticalimprov.com/article/view/1324
The Wire talks hawaiian shirts – http://www.thewire.co.uk/galleries/the-message-in-coopers-shirts
Daniela Cascella’s book En Abime:Listening, Reading,Writing where she discusses his c.d. Rayon Hula; http://www.zero-books.net/books/en-abme-listening-reading-writing-an-archival-fiction
Italian arts periodical NERO – Magical Thinking, Spirit Songs and Walking On Leaves In Ubin
http://www.neromagazine.it/magazine/index.php?c=articolo&idart=1061&idnum=40&num=30&pics=0
CONTACT – cooparia@mac.com
BOOKING – cooparia@mac.com
