Cookies Bring Music For Touching September 9th

COOKIES PLAYS ROUGH TRADE NYC ON JULY 31 WITH AVAN LAVA

MUSIC FOR TOUCHING OUT SEPTEMBER 9TH, 2014

NYC pop project Cookies will be playing a show on July 31st at 8:30pm at Rough Trade NYC with Avan Lava, performing new material off the forthcoming debut, Music For Touching. More information on the show can be found at this link on the Rough Trade NYC.

Music For Touching is the debut album from Cookies, an exquisitely crafted pop project by Ben Sterling. The record is a charming initial offering from the NYC-based musician, showcasing his talent for writing memorable pop songs with unforgettable melodies. Coming out on September 9th, Billboard premiered the title track off the forthcoming album this morning, along with the cover art and tracklisting for Music For Touching. With Billboard lauding the first reveal off the album as “captivating”, the standout first single is the perfect soundtrack for the summer.

The album was an obsessive labor of love for the native New Yorker, five years and countless detours in the making. But amidst the daily chaos of creation come flashes of breakthrough and discovery, and those moments form the body of Music For Touching: crisp, urgent, and ruthlessly catchy.

If you’re searching for easy shorthand to describe Cookies’ inscrutable sound, think Caribou jamming with Charlie Wilson and The Gap Band. Influences from disco, hip hop, classic pop and modern electronic timbres mingle into a highly personal dance music. There’s a probing, experimental edge to Sterling’s writing and production, but the result is inherently populist: Music For Touching channels a universal appeal, radiating the sort of timeless melodies that chimed out of your radio as a kid.

Sterling was co-founder of the now disbanded electro-rock vanguards Mobius Band. Signed to Ghostly International, the Brooklyn trio toured the world several times over with the likes of Cut Copy, The National, Tokyo Police Club and Matthew Dear. The eventual dissolution of the band left Sterling in a new and unfamiliar position, writing and recording entirely on his own, free of compromise.

The result is Cookies. And while Music For Touching’s ten songs segue seamlessly between each other, the albums five year gestation was marked by fitful starts and stops. There were many “rip it up and start again” rewrites. Sterling and his family waded through a dizzying tangle of car crashes, parasites, and hospitalizations. A carousel of band members came and went.

Sterling got married, scored commercials, divined songs from dreams, and recruited gifted friends to his tiny Sunset Park studio. The all-star squad of guest musicians includes Colin Stetson (Arcade Fire), Aakaash Israni (Dawn of Midi), Tom Vek, Rebecca Zeller (Ra Ra Riot), the Magik Magik Orchestra, and the voices of Melissa Metrick, Areni Agbabian and Ashley Giorgi, who serve as the female counterpoint to Sterling’s baritone.

These ten buoyant songs reflect the odyssey. They’re about sex and death, empathy and evolution. They’re built from unusual colors but exude the addictive essence of pop. This is Music For Touching. Music for falling in love, or tumbling out of it. 1,000 endless nights and 1,000 breakfasts with you. To the window, to the wall, to Fulton Mall (where Cookies’ name derives). Sex and death. Love and fear. Welcome. Music For Touching.