Cookies - Music for Touching (2014)

"Music For Touching" is the debut album from Cookies, an exquisitely crafted pop project by Ben Sterling. The album was an obsessive labor of love for the native New Yorker, five years and countless detours in the making.

Sterling was co-founder of the now disbanded electro-rock group 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. On "Music For Touching," 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.

Guest musicians include 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.