Max Cooper

Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?

Acclaimed electronic musicians, producers and sound architects Max Cooper and Rob Clouth team up for a new collaborative EP; a dark, playful four-track dive into ambient, breakbeat and techno’s subconscious flow, featuring a standout vocal performance from South London rapper FLOHIO. Recorded over a series of spontaneous London sessions, “8 Billion Realities” channels years of creative exchange between two of the genre’s most quietly innovative artists and is a result of a decision between the longtime friends to refrain from conceptual overthinking in favour of instinct and joy. As long-time admirers of each other’s audio/visual work, Cooper and Clouth collaborated in London together after both emerging from intense, idea-heavy album cycles. What followed was a series of exploratory sessions, half-improvised, half-built around half-formed thoughts. The result is a club-ready EP that feels alive and human: imperfect and hypnotically rich.

This jam-packed collection boasts ten new remixes of tracks from Max Cooper's 2016 album Emergence, a largely downtempo set inspired by his live audio-visual performances. As you'd expect, many of the reworks are dancefloor focused, with Vessels, Joe Farr (whose distorted, industrial-tinged techno take on "Panned" is a definite highlight) and techno veteran John Tejada all delivering standout interpretations. These fine remixes are accompanied by similarly impressive rubs that don't strive as hard for club plays, with Hidden Orchestra's symphonic version of "Symmetry" and Tom Hodge's intricate, melodious rework of "Cyclic" standing out.

Dj Set Cinortele Essence Max Cooper

Balance has long been a series that elicits the greatest efforts and most original thinking from artists when it comes to the concept of what we know as a DJ mix. In a world where anyone can easily cobble together a mix via a myriad of tools, it takes increasing amounts of innovation to truly stand out. Max Cooper’s blend of the artistic and scientific schools of thought have steadily built him up to become one of the standout electronic musicians of his generation.

Max Cooper's latest album project 'Unspoken Words' is available on Mesh, alongside an epic immersive film project.

While the presence of integrated thinking around releasing music has long distinguished Max Cooper, it is the notion of performance and entertainment grafted into his style which really admits Max to charge into new territory. Acclaimed musician, sound designer and creative Max Cooper releases latest single “With Me” from his ‘Motif’ EP, with an epic sci-fi visual trip directed by Michael McAfee and continuing his collaborations with Australian singer/songwriter Kathrin deBoer in an operatic garage experiment.

Cinortele - Moistened Soul (Special Set Max Cooper)