The Family Tree: The Branches Radical Face

• 1Gray Skies00:43
• 2Holy Branches03:37
• 3The Mute03:56
• 4Reminders03:33
• 5Summer Skeletons04:50
• 6The Crooked Kind04:39
• 7Chains02:11
• 8Letters Home04:11
• 9From the Mouth of an Injured Head04:04
• 10Southern Snow03:21
• 11The Gilded Hand06:14
• 12We All Go the Same03:30
• Total Runtime44:49

Info for The Family Tree: The Branches

More than 8 years ago, Ben Cooper AKA Radical Face, started crafting the story of a fictitious, and sometimes otherworldly, 19th century family. In 2011, he brought those characters to life in The Family Tree: The Roots, which was the first installment of a three-part, stand-alone album series based around the Family Tree he created. He recorded alone in the shed behind his moms house in Jacksonville, Florida. Radical Face will release the second installment to the series, The Family Tree: The Branches on October 22 via Nettwerk Records. Certain instrumentations and melodies that represent a family member will reappear in the second album as a continuation of the story or descendent. Just as The Family Tree: The Roots was limited to instruments that would have been accessible during that era of the story, The Family Tree: The Branches will progress in production by including instruments that would have become available in the next era of the story set from 1860-1910. I like storytelling, and wanted that to be the focus. I looked up genealogy charts and studied some American history for a frame of reference, then pulled from personal experiences and put it all together. Such concepts and stories come naturally to Ben, whom before turning to music wrote fiction. He switched to music after a hard drive crash where he lost his two nearly completed novels.

Ben Cooper
is a teller of stories, as seen with the fanciful album trilogy he launched in 2011, The Family Tree: The Roots, a chronicle revolving around a fictitious 19th-century family (the Northcotes) whose protagonists, unwittingly or not, chart a course for future generations. The second installment of the series, The Family Tree: The Branches, was released in 2013. The project embodies Radical Face’s fascination with big story arcs, history and genealogy — the characters in his sometimes-dark tales are drawn from research, personal experience and his own imagination.

Cooper’s own story could be the stuff of legend itself. As a teenager in Jacksonville, Fla., he had his heart set on being a professional skateboarder, but a serious back injury scotched that. He had played in rock bands but largely disdained band politics, so, inspired by books such as “East of Eden,” “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and the works of authors such as Cormac McCarthy, he embarked on writing a novel. He lost his entire manuscript in a computer crash. “So I decided to try it in record form,” he says. Radical Face’s penchant for otherworldly narratives was revealed on his 2007 release Ghost, a concept album based on the notion that houses retain memories of what transpired inside them. The song “Welcome Home” from Ghost, has garnered over 22 million YouTube views, mostly in part to a worldwide Nikon commercial (ex North America). Further television support has come from shows like Private Practice, Skins, Eddie Izzard, Weeds, as well as his late night national TV debut on Last Call With Carson Daly.

This album contains no booklet.