This past week, I made a few musical recommendations for a friend of mine, including the excellent Radical Face album, Ghost, which came out earlier this year. I rambled a bit nonsensically about the record back in April, and now six months later I'm not surprised at all to discover that it suits this fall weather we're having just as perfectly as it did the cold snap that briefly interrupted the arrival of spring. I'm also not surprised at all to discover I'm still madly in love with it, and if you have yet to check out the album yourself, hopefully these two songs will convince you that you need to. Immediately.
"Winter Is Coming"
"Wrapped in Piano Strings"
Today I checked in at the Radical Face website and was pleased to find quite a few updates. If you didn't know, Radical Face is the project of one Ben Cooper, who is a musician, writer, artist and generally talented young man. The Radical Face website is a central location where you can learn about most all of Cooper's projects, and scanning through the "news" portion of his page, you can find tidbits about the recording progress of several of his musical endeavors, links to new artwork and even a few streams of songs (there is a lovely outtake from Ghost called "The Lighthouse," which is under the July 5th update).
My favorite bit on the news page is the story behind the photo shoot that resulted in the picture that begins this post. You should go read the whole thing (it's also under the July 5th update), but here's a little taste:
The police, figuring they had a serial killer on their hands, rushed out of the station to hunt us down. Me and my brother (who was the photographer) were oblivious to all of this until we were pulled over a few miles down the road. When we got out of the car, figuring it was a speeding ticket or a busted light, the officer had his hand on his gun and was yelling at us to stay back and keep our hands where he could see them. My brother looked at me with a "What the hell?" expression on his face. The officer then asked whether we had a sack and a shovel in the car.
Two of Cooper's other music projects worth noting are Electric President and Mother's Basement. The former, which is a duo including Cooper and Alex Kane, is what led me to Radical Face in the first place, and I was happy to hear that the two are currently working on a follow-up to their excellent debut full-length. If you like Radical Face you would like Electric President too - it's more electronic but has a fairly similar feel.
"Insomnia"
"Some Crap About the Future"
Mother's Basement is something completely different, and it is more of a "project" than either Radical Face or Electric President. Together with two other musicians from Jacksonville, Florida, Cooper set out to "write songs and compositions under very specific guidelines to see how different artists would interpret the same agenda, and to see what we're personally capable of when forced to use a specific and often difficult process." So far the three have completed three "assignments" - the first requiring the musician to use Beethoven's "Piano Concierto no. 5 (Emperor)" as the source for an original piece, the second requiring the musician to use their body as the sole sound source for a piece, and the third requiring the musician to write a piece for three acoustic guitars, without vocals or effects. The results are fascinating (and available to stream on the website), and I highly suggest you give them all a listen.
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