cooperblack

A member of excellent Adelaide band The violets ventures into soundtrack territory here - literally, as this song was originally written as the soundtrack for a short film. Taking a processed loop base and peppering it with scat vocal samples, lo-fi effects and cut-and-paste editing. Presbus comes out the other side like The The's Matt Johnson at 3am on a dark corner of jazz-soundtrack cocktail bar/ In other words, blurry but stylish.


- IMPRESS Magazine issue 596 9th Feb 2000

BEAT Magazine 16th Feb 2000


Jeremy from Adelaide group The Violets goes Cooperblack for soundtrack purposes, ends up without a film but release music anyway. Presbus at first sounds like a facinating trip hop take on jazz, until it decends into hell, sounding not unlike a basket full of wailing, screaming, meowing cats. Then it has the ability to cause illness. Further three tracks are so constrictive around poor little ears than one might think that one was living on the Hellmouth and Armageddon might be about to arrive. which is to say, it's hard to listen to.
- BEAT Magazine 16th Feb 2000

A side project of The Violets' keyboardist and guitarist Jeremy Conlon, cooperblack offer a tripped out and laid back version of music of this new century. Presbus takes looped beats over spoken word vocals and introduces an element of free form jazz to produce remarkably compelling and innovative track. Bombs and Uniset World have a more conventional approach while Tr!p's Reverse Kitten is even more off beat interpretation than Presbus. A challenging but rewarding debut. Cooperblack are not to be taken lightly.

- RIU MAG ISSUE 550 10-16th Feb 2000

Triphop blurred into a sonic blunder of groove and jazz. Like walking through a street demonstration with Nina Simone at the same time as listening to Tricky on your walkman [ don't you love those long winded, highly improbable aggregates of description which, if it ever were to eventuate, would almost certainly be the cause of a great deal of anxiety rather than you stopping and thinking "Wow this sounds just like the new Cooperblack record"] . Particularly cool for those people who insist on highly irregular music as far from the mainstream as possible - you wankers. Special commendation to track four for its title Tr!ps Reverse Kitten Mix which is so angular and alienating as to be almost unlistenable - cool.

- REVOLVER Magazine 7th Feb 2000

ELECTRONIC based, but far darker that the technology driven dance pop of what is more typical in this day and age. They call it scatter, cyberjazz. I wouldn't dare. The various loops and stuff collide and then wander over your ear, or of the soundtrack altogether, while Norman Bates whispers something you can't quite hear, or don't want to. An African chant visits. A female scatters over the top, and under the noise. I'm not sure what it all means, I'm not even sure I like it, but it makes you want to listen to it again to make you find out just why. I find myself intrigued, and i like that - DRUM Magazine 15th Feb 2000

stand up
rating: 4/5
Fun electro pop tune. Definitely strands of Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire in this one. Bouncy and fast paced with a driving keyboard line.

Dan Buhagiar, triple j

- www.triplejunearthed.com

scary on the radio
rating: 3/5
i love the deep organ sounding bass line, the chorus lyrics are repeated a little often. One of those songs that will get stuck in my head and someti...

the watt riot

- www.triplejunearthed.com

stand up
rating: 4/5
Like an upbeat hot chip. I am liking it. Go Darwin!

The Brown Trout



- www.triplejunearthed.com

stand up
rating: 4/5
kind of like a ted mulry gang's jump in my car for the noughties. cool.

keith talent - www.triplejunearthed.com

Ben Langford 30/05/08

It's not a great thing to say, but if the electro-garage band Cooperblack weren't in Darwin they'd be stars.
The band will draw a fair crowd to the launch of their new CD "My Art is Bleeding" tonight.
But with a unique sound so confident it borders on the crazy, and uber-modern blend of electronics, chords and high pitched languages, the hip cats of Melbourne or Sydney would pack into clubs to hear them play.
Luckily for Darwin, the band's leading light, singer-songwriter Jeremy Conlon, has no plans to move away from his adopted hometown.
"My Art is Bleeding" is a more rocking affair than previous Cooperblack efforts, a fact that Conlon puts down to much of it being recorded live.
With Simon Kormendy on synthesizer and his madly wailing theramin, this is a local band reaching the heights of their powers.
And the influence of the German drummer Oliver Budack is clear, with the album's opening track "Affen Titten Geil" among the more bizzare points. the song's title translates as "horny tits monkey", which apparently is a popular way for old-school Germans to say "that's really cool"

- NT News Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.