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Electric
President
Music sounds different by
the sea than at any other place: Burt Bacharach's Pacific
Coast Highway, Jim O'Rourke's Ghost Ship in a Storm,
or those Teenage Symphonies to God which Brian Wilson,
being scared of water, composed in his Californian bedroom
- complete with artificial beach beneath his feet. Electric
President's music throws a glance at the sea as well.
They drifted from Jacksonville Beach/Florida through
the Atlantic Ocean up to Berlin, from Ben Cooper to
Morr Music. These ten songs interpret pop as an ocean
of impressions and sensations and surf on their own
and special surge. Ben Cooper, age 23, compiled his
clear but complex pop-pearls along with Alex Kane, 21,
to form their first self-titled album. Continuously,
Cooper's soft but still precise idiom drifts into our
ears, as a flattering yearning. And maybe it is this
voice that describes his music's agenda best: stripped,
immediate and at the same time interwoven with euphonic
choirs. Some people might be reminded of Death Cab for
Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard - but without the teenage angst.
Ben Cooper is a songwriter and arranger; he is a guitarist,
drummer, laptop artist
The order of these occupations
is determined by his music and his moods. At times intimate
and reduced, as in Grand Machine No. 12, enriched only
by means of a few digital clicks and some heart-warming
backing vocals. In other instances, it's hymnal and
interlocking, as in the sunny opening song: Good Morning,
Hypocrite. Maybe they are melancholic - as melancholic
as splendid pop songs mostly are. Ben Cooper has written
shiny pop songs, has arranged and recorded them with
Alex Kane over the course of eight months. Bedroom recordings
in the best sense, however, with little in common with
lofi. The only approach they share is to keep one's
musical ideas very close to the heart and give over
as little as possible to other's hands.
Links
www.electricpresident.com
www.morrmusic.com
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