RIYL: Derek Bailey, David Bowie, Tim Buckley, John Cale, Michael Chapman, Lol Coxhill, Davey Graham, Steve Gunn, Van Morrison, Louis Moholo, Mike Osborne, Lou Reed, Sonny Sharrock & Television.

Mike Cooper wrote his final songwriter record, a suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio, while living on the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain, an era when he was considering retiring from music altogether. A chance encounter and a last-ditch record deal convinced him to make one last album, which he recorded in 1974 at Pathway Studios in London, with “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World,” featuring the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Louis Moholo and Harry Miller with UK saxophonist Mike Osborne.

This first-ever reissue includes a bonus CD of Milan Live Acoustic 2018, a previously unreleased solo set that represents Cooper’s return, after forty-four years pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, steel guitar, and songcraft.

The deluxe LP+CD edition also features a six-panel insert with additional artwork and an essay by the artist about both records. The deluxe 2xCD gatefold edition features an eight-panel version of the same insert.

In the wake of his magisterial triptych of early 1970s avant-folk-rock records Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971), and The Machine Gun Co. (1972) the British songwriter, guitarist, and fledgling improviser Mike Cooper retreated to the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain. With no prospects for touring or recording again, his fiery band the Machine Gun Co. had disintegrated. Cooper sets the scene in his liner notes of the first-ever reissue of his unjustly forgotten next album Life and Death in Paradise (1974): No one came running with offers of fame and riches, and we fell apart, and I left the country and headed for the beach, disillusioned and a bit disorientated musically. I went to Almuñécar in Andalusia, a place I had been going since 1969, because a painter friend from Reading, Rowland Fade who made the collage in the gatefold of my earlier album Trout Steel had moved there in 1968.

It was in this synthetic coastal “paradise,” unmoored and adrift, considering retiring from music altogether, that he began tentatively writing new songs. A chance encounter with producer Tony Hall, who offered Cooper a last-ditch record deal on Hall’s nascent Fresh Air label, convinced him to make one last album with the stipulation that he could assemble what he called “The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.” I told Tony that I would do it if I could hire some of my South African jazz musician friends that I had used on my Pye/Dawn albums and some friends from Reading that I still knew and admired. I called up Harry Miller, Louis Moholo, and Mike Osborne, who were in fact a trio at the time … and several local Reading heroes, including the singer-songwriter Terry Clarke. The result, recorded live with minimal overdubbing at Pathway Studios in London, was Life and Death in Paradise, an utterly singular suite of gloaming glam-rock anthems performed with a spiritual jazz trio comprising the inventive South African jazz rhythm section of Moholo and Miller with UK saxophonist Osborne. Unlike anything else in Cooper’s extensive catalog. Fresh Air fizzled, and Life and Death became Cooper’s final record as a songwriter, having pushed the form as far as he could.

Drifting north from Spain back to the UK, he fell into the scene of the London Musicians Collective (LMC) including Paul Burwell, David Toop, and saxophonist Lol Coxhill, Cooper’s bandmate in the Recedents and fully embraced free improvisation. He was still, however, interested in singing and lyrics, so, influenced by Tom Phillips, William Burroughs, and Brion Gysin, he began experimenting with text collage and cut-up techniques, arriving at his own hybrid compositional strategy for improvisatory songs. The previously unreleased solo set Milan Live Acoustic 2018 represents Cooper’s return, after more than four decades pursuing free improvisation and electronics, to a new, deconstructed approach to singing, lap steel guitar, and songcraft. Presented here together with Life and Death in Paradise, the two records provide fascinating bookends to Mike Cooper’s long, mercurial, and pioneering practice as a songmaker.

TRACK LISTING

Life And Death In Paradise:
A1. Rocket Summer
A2. Black Night Crash (including “Horry Rocker Show”)
A3. O.M.M. Coda
B1. Suicide De Luxe (including “Rock And Roll Hi Way”)
B2. Life And Death In Paradise (including “Through A Veil,” “Beads On A String,” And “Reprise”)
B3. Critical Incidents

Milan Live Acoustic 2018:
1. Migrants Song
2. Approaching Zero
3. Industrial Hazard
4. In Moments Of Reverie
5. Peach Trees
6. Sage And Thyme
7. Lord Franklin

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2016 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

First-ever reissue of Cooper’s rare first recordings and PoB’s first Record Store Day release. RIYL Mike Cooper, Michael Chapman, Jackson C. Frank, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Wizz Jones, or Clive Palmer. Available on virgin vinyl as a limited-edition 45 rpm 7”, with heavy-duty color jacket, restored original artwork, and notes. In 2014 Paradise of Bachelors reissued iconoclastic English-born, Rome-based folk and experimental music legend Mike Cooper’s classic triptych of early 1970s avant-folk-rock records—Trout Steel (1970) and Places I Know/The Machine Gun Co. with Mike Cooper (1971-72)—to widespread critical acclaim, including Best New Reissue recognition from Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. But Cooper sowed the seeds of his deconstructivist music five years earlier in his rare earliest recordings, until now scarcely known and never reissued—fitting fodder for PoB’s very first Record Store Day release. Named for The Shades, the Reading, UK folk club where he regularly performed, and which employed and housed guitar prodigy Derek Hall—who later played on Cooper’s 1969 debut LP Oh Really!?—the little-heard Out of the Shades EP was released in an extremely limited edition by local label Kennet Recordings in 1965 as KRS 766. The songs were recorded live to a single microphone in the kitchen/bathroom/former outhouse of Mike’s rambling Georgian apartment, on a portable Ferrograph reel-to-reel that the engineer otherwise used for “recording birds and trains.” By 1965 Mike had already progressed beyond and exhausted his interest in electric Chicago blues with his first band The Blues Committee. He was now a peer of British folk scene stalwarts like Davey Graham, Wizz Jones, Bert Jansch, and John Renbourn, hosting folk nights up to five nights a week at venerable Reading and London clubs like Les Cousins, The Latin Quarter, The Elephant, and The Shades, Hall’s home base. Cooper recalls his former partner’s artistry and skill with fondness and wonder:

TRACK LISTING

A1. "Paul’s Song" 3.20 A2. "Darlin’" 2.33 B1. "Livin’ With The Blues" 2.57 B2. "Skillet" 2.51