Radical Face presents prequel EP!

Can you hear the church bells pealing? Has the Pony Express galloped through your town to deliver the message? Jacksonville, Florida’s Radical Face (aka Ben Cooper) is releasing a highly anticipated, October record…his first full-length since 2007’s heart stopper Ghost. How does an artist who plays admission optional shows, communicates thoughtfully with his fans via website/message board and suggests good sounds by other artists celebrate a new record? Well, by giving his listeners a free prequel EP beforehand, of course!

The Bastards: Volume One is a three-track, eleven minute example of what Cooper does best: tell stories in a deliberate evolutionary pattern by way of careful instrumentation and poetry. Track 2, “All is Well (Goodbye, Goodbye)” especially reminds listeners how big – lyrically and sonically – a song by Cooper can grow to be. This characteristic isn’t accomplished by a listener merely curling fingers around the volume dial and turning. It’s achieved by the artist’s careful execution of crescendos and decrescendos at precisely the right time a music-loving human brain wants to hear (and feel) the music change, among other things.

With both buzzy feedback in “All is Well (It’s Only Blood)” and simple, un-experimental, folky harmonies in the final track, “We’re on Our Way”, Cooper illustrates his evolution as a musician and grasp on quite a few genres as well. A surprising and exciting change, in fact, as it is one of the first times a more folk-inspired, almost back-country Cooper has peeked from behind a curtain of distortion. Awesome. It certainly gets the gears of imagination cranking about what gifts he has in store for the stratosphere on October 4th when The Family Tree: The Roots drops. Stay tuned.

The Bastards: Volume One by Radical Face

Download The Bastards: Volume One below.