Mike Cooper - Lap Steel Guitar, FX
Scot Ray - Lap Steel Guitar, FX

Recorded via isolation file sharing between Spain and Montana.

“Two fine and adventurous slide guitarists. Oddball melodicism, Hawaiian-ish washes, noise, off-kilter electronics and more. Much fun!” (Brian Olewnick, NY)

Story - Charles Budd Robinson (32), a Canadian botanist and explorer whose death on 5 December 1913 may have been caused by linguistic confusion, as he was known to speak the local language quite poorly. The Malay word for coconut, "kelapa" may have been confused with "kepala", the word for "head". If Robinson asked the boy to cut, "potong", down a coconut it may have been mispronounced and heard as a threat to cut off someones head. There was a local myth of a werewolf-like decapitator called a "potong kepala" and he was mistaken for one.

"I am always on the look out for Lap Steel players who are 'outside the box' of the generic music usually associated with the instrument. Fabrizio at Long Song Records in Italy sent me a c.d. of improvisations by Scot Ray and Jim McAuley (Second Earth) - I was delighted to discover Scot Ray played lap steel guitar well outside the box and immediately went to his Bandcamp site and purchased more. As isolation set in here in Spain I decided to contact him and suggest a virtual meeting and file sharing collaboration. This is the result and more will be forthcoming we hope. The title of the collection, in Indonesian, translates as Two Coconut Heads." - Mike Cooper

“Getting to know the formidable intrepid encyclopedic slide world of Mike Cooper has been a neuron expanding adventure. That the universe conspired (in)directly via Fabrizio Perissinotto, Jim McAuley, and Erik Griswold, to give us an opportunity to converse long distance - well, it was all kinds of non-fixed pitch post-exotica pedal tweaking goodness and an unexpected delight in the surreality of things to dive into this collaboration with such a stellar slide player and kindred sonicnaut.” - Scot Ray

*Visual Collaborations on Dua Kepala Kelapa >

Nathaniel Draper, France - Jaggery Road vimeo.com/draper/jaggeryroad
Greg Pope, Norway - Mount Analogue I
vimeo.com/417762303
Grayson Cooke, Australia - Mount Analogue II
vimeo.com/419414777
Michele Manfellotto, Italy - Ngoc Ngoc
youtu.be/QlZGJs7XJsE
Mike Cooper, Spain - The Darkside of Glowing Fish
youtu.be/qz_pASf_IMA

Mix and Cover Art by Mike.
www.cooparia.com
mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-and-scot-ray-dua-kepala-kelapa