South Africa has seen some amazing international artists this year, although I have to say that Max Cooper might be the most anticipated.
Control, humility and precision - emotion, release and catharsis. There’s 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 other producers see as an unbridgeable chasm between different styles, BPM’s, approaches, instruments and feeling, Cooper views as a single musical toolbox.
The private side of Cooper, meanwhile, is the humble scientist, the producer who works while others network, who is more influenced by modernist classical than dance-music trends, and who introduces new releases on his facebook with the self-effacing “I hope you enjoy this one!” Despite the affirmation of being made a Beatport artist of the year 2012, voted one of Resident Advisor’s top 20 live acts, and having, for influential US electronica site XLR8R, a top 10 most-popular podcast and single download, as well as two of its most popular videos, Cooper still feels he is at the start and not the peak of his artistic ambitions. There are more collaborations with visual artists to come, his debut album, a series of musical pieces inspired by contemporary art, his contribution to the FIELDS live-electronica label and tours - all part of his calling to fuse the gospel of science and rationality with the excess and exuberance of the most creative electronic music.
Blame that on Cooper’s background. Raised in a town outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, as a child Cooper was sent to a Steiner school - the only mixed-religion school in the neighborhood, but also one that pushed its pupils to be free spirits: independent and questioning, reflective and self-disciplined. And that’s how, first DJing local student club Firefly during his university years in Nottingham, he simultaneously managed to earn a PhD in computational biology (genetics) and produce his first tracks. And how, while stacking up the hours as a genetics researcher for University College London, he wrote his first significant releases for German techno label Traum Schallplatten: the trilogy of “Serie” EPs, each taking a different scientific concept as inspiration, both musically and in the collaborative animated videos he commissioned from Andrew Brewer / Whiskas fX.
Having retired his research job in 2010, Cooper is now established as one of the UK’s most intriguing, prolific electronic acts. There’s now fifteen commissioned experimental animations with filmakers like Germany’s Henning M Lederer, 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 - and a fanbase that regularly offers up its own visual take on his tracks. There’s a heavily trafficked podcast series that includes two seminal mixes for Resident Advisor and XLR8R, John Digweed’s Transitions show, the launch of the Magnetic Mag soundscape series, where Cooper released a hugely successful experimental podcast inspired by the British Library; Cooper’s research efforts with the staff of noted music-software house Line; his recent “4D sound” show in Amsterdam and his soundtrack for Zaha Hadid’s pitch for the Japan National Stadium, plus 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).
With Cooper, there’s contrast, and also unity. A reserved, clinical producer who’s known for the emotion and melody of his music. The writer of delicate soundscapes for the female voice who quietly slipped out an EP of pounding snare rolls called Mechanical Concussion. A remixer of blog bands like MMOTHS, Halls, BRAIDS - and a go-to remixer for techno labels like Herzblut, Bedrock and artists like Bodzin, Romboy and Agoria. A minimalist who likes to relax with a bit of hip-hop scratching and turntablism - and who is working on ways to use turntablism to operate other electronic instruments. A live act known both to be both naggingly hypnotic and blisteringly tough.
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.
Pulse Radio caught up with Max Cooper ahead of his South African tour to find out what he has planned for the South African dance floors, the 4D system that he's been testing out and working with Tom Hodge on some new material.
You've been working with Tom Hodge on a few new EP's. Who is Tom Hodge and how did you guys meet? Tom is a pianist and all round amazing classical composer. I love his solo work and under his project "Piano Interrupted", so we arranged to meet to exchange some ideas and we seemed to have a common goal for a collaboration, so it all worked out pretty smoothly right through the process, he's great to work with.
Your video explaining the 4D system is impressive, do you think clubbing systems will head this way eventually turning how you listen to music into that much more or is it just museum experience stuff. It's a very specialist system that requires a lot of expertise, expenses and space to set up, so it's not right for most clubs. But I think it will spread to certain key venues around the world, as it's a totally new and immersive experience, and it can work for club shows as well as museum pieces - I do a bit of both for my show with it.
Coming to South Africa at the end of this month, do you plan on trying anything new or experimental? It will be my first time there, so it will all be a bit of an experiment - I'll be testing out different types of music and trying to get a feel for what people are in to there, it's interesting how people in different parts of the world have really different taste of music even in the same club environment. What gets people crazy in one place can clear the dance floor in another…hopefully I can avoid clearing the dance floor though, I'll go easy on the gabba to start with.
How have you been working your PhD in Genetics with your music at the moment? Any new developments? I finished my PhD in 2008, then did some post-doc work before ditching the science completely and focusing on music. I found that if I wanted to make either one really work, I had to devote all of my time to it, and I wasn't going to give up on the music so unfortunately the science had to go. I do still read a lot of science though, and have an active interest in it, maybe I'll go back that way someday when I'm too old for fat raves (MC Taz reference).
You said recently that you will be performing on tour with a visual aspect to your show? Any visual show we can expect for South Africa or should we dare you? Don't believe anything you read online! In which case that's not true and you should believe it, but then you shouldn't, but then you should….in a pickle now eh. But no, I don't have a visual show, you'll have to dare me.
Have you had any new means of inspirations for music you've written recently? Yeah, I've been doing some work with jazz musicians recently, Quentin Collins, a trumpeter, and Kathrin deBoer a vocalist. It was a bit of an experiment to see what would happen if we had a live jazz improvisation session with my music as a base, and it's sounding pretty interesting. I get bored if I make too music of the same sort of music, so I'm always looking for new ways to work to provide inspiration for myself, even if it turns out the people out there don't like it. I'd rather experiment and make 1 track people love for every 10 they don't, than knock out standardized tracks that fit a predefined format for success.
Catch Max Cooper in action this weekend at the exquisite new club in Johannesburg And on Friday as well as Pulse Radio's rated number 17 party to do before you die 'Kinky Disco' on Saturday.
LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/maxcoopermax
Listen to Max Cooper on Pulse Radio