In the wake of his magisterial triptych of early 1970s avant-folk-rock records—Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971), and The Machine Gun Co. (1972) (all previously reissued by Paradise of Bachelors)—the British songwriter, guitarist, and fledgling improviser Mike Cooper retreated to the Costa Tropical of Granada, Spain. With no prospects for touring or recording again, his fiery band the Machine Gun Co. had disintegrated. Cooper sets the scene in his liner notes of the first-ever reissue of his unjustly forgotten next album Life and Death in Paradise (1974):
