With a vision birthed in a shed behind his family’s house, and out of the ashes of two finished novels that he lost on a crashed hard drive, Cooper garnered acclaim from the likes of NPR, Paste Magazine, Diffuser, The BBC, The Independent, The Wild Honey Pie, in addition to performing across multiple continents and on late night television for Last Call with Carson Daly. But alongside this, after a family member came to him about her sexual and religious abuse, he found himself a witness in a criminal trial against the very people he grew up with. Meanwhile, “Welcome Home, Son” from his 2007 debut Ghost would land syncs on the trailer for the Academy® Award-winning The Descendants and on The Blacklist as well as soundtracking ad campaigns for Nikon and Chevrolet, eventually amassing over 66 million Spotify streams. Soon after, The Leaves became his third consecutive album to bow in the Top 30 of Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, coinciding with the adoption of his niece and his newfound role as her legal guardian.

But now, with all that chaos behind him, the time has arrived for Cooper to take the next step.

“What am I without this giant concept that’s pulled me along for so many years?” he asks. “In a lot of ways, I’m free. For a long time, I used music almost like therapy, a way to cope. But there are lots of other methods out there, and I’d like to try some on. I really want to explore again and find what’s exciting to me instead of plugging music into some giant skeleton I’ve built. I want to surprise myself again. Everything’s up in the air, and it’s very exciting.” Harking back to the more cinematic production of his debut, Cooper drew on a rather surprising set of influences for his next musical progression. Inspired by a sonic palette ranging from obscure rap artists to experimental electronic work, and “playlists of the weirdest production that I would ask friends to send me,” he confidently steps into new territory, merging his quiet, soulful delivery with heavy sampling and vast soundscapes.

He even took a cue from the hip-hop game, now releasing music in short unpredictable bursts. “In the rap world, artists just put out music at all kinds of rates,” he goes on. “It’s not about this drawn out record cycle, or being so stuck to the traditional idea of an album. There’s this delightful chaos to it. I’ve been really inspired by that. If I’m happy with something, I’ll just put it out. I want to tour and play some music I just wrote instead of all being songs I penned years ago.”

At the same time, Radical Face’s new music remains as cinematic, poetic, and poignant as ever. “In my life, there have been a lot of times where I got lost in records when I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Cooper leaves off. “I would be sitting on a city bus when the right track came on and, for the duration of that song, suddenly everything made sense. I always hoped I could write something that another person could find that same comfort in. The way I was comforted as a scared teenager at 14 who just got kicked out of his house, I have always wanted to pass that same comfort along.”