Resident Advisor top 20 live act 2012. A Beatport top 10 artist of 2012. One of XLR8R’s 10 most popular podcasts and single downloads, and two most-popular videos, 2012. Resident Advisor top 100 DJ, 2011!
Control, humility and precision — emotion, release and catharsis. There are two sides to Max Cooper. The public side is known for extended festival sets — a hybrid live/DJ performance that explodes from delicate, reflective electronica into abrasive noise within a moment, but just as fearlessly throttles back to moments of stillness and silent beauty — within the same track, across three or four hours of playing, or within the space of a couple of expertly chosen samples. What others producers see as an unbridgeable chasm between different styles, BPMs, approaches, instruments and feeling, Cooper views as a single musical toolbox, with every tool is at hand to a producer who’s been playing out for 15 years.
Cooper is now established as one of the UK’s most intriguing, prolific electronic acts. There’s now eleven commissioned experimental animations with filmakers like the UK’s Nick Cobby and Whiskas fX, France’s Cedric De Smedt, Russia’s Dmitry Zakharov and Italy’s Vicetto, to accompany his music. There’s a heavily trafficked podcast series that includes two seminal mixes for Resident Advisor and XLR8R, John Digweed’s Transitions show, the upcoming launch of the Magnetic Mag soundscape series, in which Cooper will release music inspired by the his favourite architectural space; Cooper’s research efforts with the staff of noted music-software house Liine; and his back catalogue of nearly 60 original tracks and remixes … With all this, Cooper has pushed beyond his early apprenticeship as a 4/4 techno producer to become something new and unique in the electronic landscape.
As known now for visual experiments as his yearning and emotional reworks of huge acts like Au Revoir Simone and Hot Chip — and his more glitchy, experimental approach to working with traditional orchestral composers like Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm and rising Planet Mu-style mentalist Vaetxh — Cooper continues to evolve, absorb new influence, and change the rules for who electronic artists should work with, and how. The first producer outside of Richie Hawtin’s Minus Records family invited to join Hawtin’s prestigious booking agency, Clonk, he’s also the first musician ever allowed to rework the music of Michael Nyman, seminal minimalist and one of the world’s most identifiable soundtrack composers (The Piano, Gattaca).
A blend of science and feeling, risk-taking live performance and polished musicianship — in 2013, Max Cooper looks ready to become one of the biggest acts in the electronic world.
