Fratello Mare

Fratello Mare, a reference to Folco Quilici’s classic film of the same name, is the latest tropical opus from UK born, Italian based musician Mike Cooper. It’s Cooper’s continuing ode to the Pacific, its people and the traditions that have flowed from that part of the world into seemingly endless iterations within contemporary culture. Recorded across 2014, the album dovetails neatly with his other Room40 editions White Shadows In The South Seas and the post-everything classic Rayon Hula. It expands his combining of highly personal lap steel playing, with exotic music and percussion alongside field recordings made on islands across South East Asia and the Caribbean whilst on residencies and other travels. At the record’s heart is a yearning these distant islands that dot the vast oceans. A love letter of sorts, a poetic and dreamlike wandering, that sonically traverses the ever-changing edge of land and sea and Cooper's musical imagination.

Mike Cooper isn’t widely known, but to the extent that the wider world has heard of him, it’s as part of the canon of exploratory singer-songwriters of the '60s and '70s. But he also provides live music for silent films, paints and does collage, and releases albums of experimental, loop-based guitar music. The shimmering, tropical Fratello Mare is one such album.

Unclassifiable veteran British guitarist Mike Cooper has periodically turned to Lawrence English's Room40 label to release his warped visions of tropical paradise, beginning with 2004's Rayon Hula and continuing with 2013's White Shadows in the South Seas.