Mike Cooper - Black Flamingo [Room40 Promo]

Released via Australia's ever active Room40 imprint on May 18th, 2k23 is "Black Flamingo", the latest album by British Blues guitarist x singer Mike Cooper who's been active on the album circuit since the late 1960s. Cooper, who might seem to be a quite leftfield and unusual artist to be signed to the label at first glance, caters a 15 pieces strong and 51 minutes spanning longplay outing conceived, like many others, throughout the Covid-19 induced pandemic lockdown period, following the simple premise of 'collaboration, improvisation, innovation', virtually teaming up with a long list of renowned contributors and collaborators to create, and simply create for the whole purpose of creation. The result is a vastly varied and oftentimes surprising one with cuts like "Black Flamingo" fusing Desert PostRock, FreeJazz and repetetive ritualistic patterns whilst at the same dabbling with twangy Psychedelia, dubbed out echoes of echoes of echoes of what is called 'dream time' by the indigenous people of Australis, "The Possibility Of Rain" is fusing jazzy and folksy Improv elements whereas "A Lemon Fell" indulges in subaquatic guitar dubs and otherworldly voice experiments, "The Numbers" pairs more twangy guitars and a polyphony of different African dialects counting to the exact number of 26 whilst the "Trancendence Dub" once again harks back to hypnotic tribalism and "Sun Ra Sulks, And A B Flat Hat VI" amalgamates a variety of Field Recordings from unscathed nature with slightly unsettling low end rumbles just to name a few. If you've been following the Room40 label mainly for its purist Ambient approach so far you might be in for a surprise with this one.