This reissue British artist Mike Cooper's two excellent albums, originally released in 1970 and 1971, respectively; his departure from folk-blues is evident on these two documents. His diversity is one of the most striking traits of his work, considering that Cooper has worked in free improvisation, avant-garde, Hawaiian guitar music, and – much later in the '90s – even drum'n'bass-inflected electronica. As a British folk-blues artist of the '60s, obvious comparisons to Bert Jansch and John Renbourn abound. Like many of his contemporaries of that movement, he progressed to a folk-rock singer/songwriter mode by 1971 and gave listeners Places I Know, which is rooted in the tradition of Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, and Randy Newman's sophistication with the form.
Change, or at least an evolution of the Halsall sound, is very much in the air on this wonderful new record. Credited to Halsall and the Gondwana Orchestra there is a feeling of expansion of the musical palette, further steps on a satisfying journey towards the destination identified on 2012's transitional Fletcher Moss Park. That earlier record showed the way that Halsall was looking to evolve and shift his musical path—it began with pieces recorded in 2010 around the time of the Gilles Peterson Worldwide award winning On the Go, took in a couple of piano and bass-less tracks from a more experimental July 2011 session and ended up with a couple of tracks recorded in April 2012 by something broadly resembling the line-up for When the World Was One.
Until it was swept aside by the pop explosion of the 1960s, jazz was the most popular modern sound on earth. From the New World and the Caribbean to Africa, across the Soviet Bloc and the British Empire to the Far East, jazz music was embraced, adopted, played and enjoyed.