Decades after their initial conception during the tumultuous Thatcher years, international musical explorer, lap steel guitarist, singer, improviser, composer and provocateur Mike Cooper recently re-released (on June 5th) two powerfully resonant tracks, “Law And Order” and “Our Emotional Style,” as a stark commentary on the present state of the United Kingdom. Packaged as “Requiem For The UK – Two Folk Songs”, the release is a timely protest, with Cooper noting that despite years of political shifts, “nothing has changed.”
Originally featured on his 2005 album Spirit Songs, the tracks were born from a unique artistic process. The lyrics were crafted using a “cut-up” technique, similar to that used by William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and British artist Tom Phillips, working in particular with Thomas Pynchon‘s two novels, Gravity’s Rainbow and V, to create a fragmented yet poignant critique of authority and societal mood. Recorded at The Steelworks in Rome and in a London flat, the songs feature Cooper’s signature improvised guitar work, a haunting backdrop to his politically charged poetry.
Cooper said: “I am re-releasing them as two tracks isolated from the rest of the Spirit Songs pieces because in all the time that has passed nothing has changed in the UK despite several changes of government from right to left and back and forth and so on. In the past few weeks, Law And Order in the UK has prompted me to offer these two pieces again as protest.”
This sonic diptych serves as a potent reminder of art’s role as a persistent, questioning voice in the face of enduring political and social anxieties.
