ARTIST: Mike Cooper
TITLE: Rayon Hula
GENRE: Instrumental
LABEL: HipShot
BITRATE: 171 kbps avg
SIZE: 52 MB
TRACKS: 10
ENCODER: LAME v3.90.3 --alt-preset standard
SOURCE: CD
LENGTH: 41:12
RIP DATE: 2006-01-31
TRACK LIST:
1 Mele Manu & Ho Hokani Pila 8:04
2 Musa Shiya 2:59
3 Kokoke Nalu 3:38
4 Rayon Hula 2:14
5 Ho Amanau Nul 1:57
6 Paumalu (Sunset Beach) 6:25
7 Typhoon Lagoon 3:08
8 Mika Ohe 2:59
9 Caught Inside 2:56
10 The New Urban Hula Slide & The Tiki Bar Is Closed 6:52
RELEASE NOTES:
"...Mike Cooper's Rayon Hula is the first truly sincere
attempt at 21st century exotica I've come across, a cool
breeze of an album, experimental but eminently listenable.
Cooper is a British expatriate, and for the past 40 years he
has played blues, folk and improv with some of the Britain's
best and brightest. For this album, he turns his attention
to the strange, misunderstood world of exotica, specifically
the Hawaiian cool jazz of Arthur Lyman. Rayon Hula is billed
as a dual tribute to Lyman, the incomparable musician behind
classics like Taboo and Hawaiian Sunset, and Ellery Chun,
the inventor of the Hawaiian shirt. If the premise sounds
dangerously kitschy, the album certainly does not.
Constructed from a series of looped samples from Arthur
Lyman's records, Cooper overdubs his own lap steel guitar,
electronics and field recordings. The result is a densely
layered album, where complex arrangements and gently
circulating piano melodies float over off-kilter, irregular
rhythms. Care has been taken to arrange all of the elements
in a slightly askew fashion, so that accidental convergences
occur between the whimsical, hypnotic loops and Cooper's
added electronic noises and curling steel guitar. It's a
marvelously under-produced album, as if Cooper knew just
when to let go and let the music stand. Noisy, atonal
passages give way to warm, tropical rushes of melody.
Backwards-tracked memories cycle through forgotten vacation
photographs of lei makers, coconut stands, midnight luaus
with synchronized hula dancers gesturing on the blue sand
shores of the Pacific. "
from www.brainwashed.com
http://www.cooparia.org.uk/