Mike Cooper – Metal Box (Rossbin Production)

Mike Cooper dedicates this record to the memory of John Fahey, and his “metal box’ is in fact his National Steel bodied resonator guitar. This 1920′ Tri-Plate acoustic guitar has been with him since the early 1960′ when he was playing folk and blues and now finds itself as the sole sound source for this record. That is aside from some prepared electric guitar from Melbournian Tim Catlin on the opener Standard De Luxe-Git On Board, which opens with some disconcerting panning and descends into acoustic noodling, backward masking and ghostly electric atmospheres. The six pieces here are played live, though elements are also sampled and treated with various effects, meaning that the acoustic nature is quite apparent, though often exists alongside peculiar squeaking, scraping and other bizarre textural and electronic sounding flourishes. It’s an interesting jittery form of improvisation, with the acoustic guitar offering a comforting porch like feel despite the abstract method in which it is played and some of the stranger more difficult to identify textural elements seeming to push themselves into the mix almost of their own accord