There’s More To Radical Face Than First Meets The Eye
Floridian musician Ben Cooper a.k.a Radical Face is renowned across the world for his intricate and spellbinding music. What fans and music followers may not know however is his album releases, ‘The Family Tree’, over the past decade actually form a concept trilogy, with lyrical and music video themes encompassing both his own supernatural literary work and his childhood experiences. The latest album by Radical Face, ‘The Family Tree: The Leaves’, sees Cooper intertwine the story of the Northcotes, a fictitious 19th century family, with his own personal accounts.
The Northcotes have a strange, dark magic in their bloodline, which Cooper impressively conveys through melodic patterns and motifs across the three albums. The story goes the family’s blood flows with special abilities that range from seeing spirits to bringing the dead back to life, and their secrets end up binding them together to protect themselves against the world.
“…the visuals as the young boy escapes combining with Cooper’s string arrangements are gorgeous, and as the music comes to an end you can’t help but smile.”
Cooper says he always wanted to write a book. “I was drawn to ‘East of Eden’ and ‘A Hundred Years of Solitude’, those multi-generational family sagas where you see how one person’s life affects the family line.”
When he was 19-years-old, Cooper wrote two books, but both were lost in a “cataclysmic hard drive crash”. But instead of giving up on his art and literary dream, he turned to music. “I thought why not do them as records? There could be a set of people and we follow their bloodlines, and instead of passing down genetic traits we could pass down melodic patterns that mutate with each generation.
“When I started, I thought I would do three EPs, but it ran away with me. I didn’t know I was signing up for an eight-year project. The first record, ‘The Roots’ (2011), starts the smallest. The lyrics were all verbal storytelling and it focused on small sounds, a floor tom, an acoustic guitar, and a piano.
“Then each record it would get more broad, and it’d expand. The second one, ‘The Branches’ (2013), was all about written letters. The third, ‘The Leaves’ (2016), is more cinematic. It’s a time period of film and photographs,” says Cooper.
The lead single from ‘The Family Tree: The Leaves’ is immediately different to his hit single from his first album ‘The Roots’, Welcome Home. The 2011 track’s pure heart-warming folk vibe, personified by real-life handclaps for percussion, is transformed into an almost industrial-folk ballad. The Road To Nowhere is enjoyably sinister in sound, with driving drum kit rhythms and cascading stringed and piano melodies providing the perfect backdrop for Cooper’s delicate storytelling vocals.
“…before he uses mind control to incapacitate the doctor, set in time to the song’s chilling jagged electric guitar breakdown.”
The lead single’s music video perfectly conveys the song’s sinister and intricate production. Set in the white-tiled basements of an abandoned building, the video follows a young boy seemingly kidnapped by a doctor to attempt unorthodox experiments.
During his days locked in a room the boy experiences flashbacks and visions, possibly clues from Cooper’s previous releases, before he uses mind control to incapacitate the doctor, set in time to the song’s chilling jagged electric guitar breakdown. Afterwards, the visuals as the young boy escapes combining with Cooper’s string arrangements are gorgeous, and as the music comes to an end you can’t help but smile.
‘The Leaves’ other single, Everything Costs, in contrast is a warm hug for your ears. Cooper’s vocals are paired with a delightful female harmony that floats over an arrangement chockers with instrumentation. Energetic drums, a softly plucked acoustic guitar, and steady piano anchor the track, while woodwinds, strings, and synthetic sounds take turns projecting the song’s charming bouncy melody.
The music video for Everything Costs follows (assumingly) the sister of the young boy in the previous single as she lives in a mansion, watched over by a slightly overbearing nanny. There are many clues throughout the video about her connection with the boy such as a pet rat, writing on walls, and suggestions of mind control and telepathy.
The music is thoughtfully coy as the footage of the somewhat harmless girl smartly conveys an underlying theme of innocence yet a connection to the supernatural and the sinister vibe to Cooper’s musical arrangements. The video ends with an intriguing twist…that we won’t spoil for you, just watch the video below!
While Cooper’s lyrical themes take place in an alternate reality, his real life has also seen trauma and family issues. Growing up in an interracial family of 10 in the South of America, Cooper and his siblings dealt with the issues of racism and a fractured family firsthand.
When he came out as homosexual to his parents at 14 he was kicked out of his home and had to work full time while going to high school. With a fractured family, Cooper found a home in music.
“Even with the saddest things, you can make them beautiful,” says Cooper.
“A lot of us got into music because we were outcasts in a southern town. A lot of friends let me stay on their couches if I needed. I joined five bands, some with instruments I didn’t know how to play. That’s how I learned everything I play now, by not wanting to be home. It’s a good crash course, though. Join a band as a drummer when you’ve got a show in three weeks and you learn quick.”
His childhood experiences were impossible to separate from his creative process, and for the first time on an album Cooper autobiographical song, Bad Blood.
“It’s my life, but I wrap it in fiction. I’ve always been guilty of using music as a therapy. Because with music you can take something ugly or hard and can turn it into something pretty. You can force it to become something that it never intended. Even with the saddest things, you can make them beautiful,” says Cooper.
Cooper has continued to create truly amazing folk soundscapes paired with music videos that could (and should) form the introduction to an incredible drama series or movie. His attention to detail to beautifully, and somewhat hauntingly, portray his emotive and illustrative lyricism is a wonder in it’s own right, and we cannot wait to see what Radical Face’s next concept will produce.
