MAX COOPER Vinyl & CDs

Review: The Glassforms collaborative project is a meeting of two different but equally brilliant minds in innovative pianist Bruce Brubaker and scientist turned electronic artist Max Cooper. Here they take Philip Glass's musicians use it as a source for fortress exploration and expression. Cooper actually built a new system for musical expression through coding with software developer Alexander Randon and created a way to take live information from a piano and transform it into new forms that drive his synths. The resulting collision of piano and synth is an utterly dynamic and beguiling one.

Review: Max Cooper has never been one to conform. The electronic composer, musician, producer and DJ has built his career around trying to push the limits of musical and visual arts tech, either in the studio or live arena. So it's little surprise to learn On Being, his latest long player, was conceived through a process of reversing standard relationships between artist, their experiences and influences, and the audience. Over a two year period, Cooper gathered anonymous quotes from strangers dealing with existential questions: what do you want to express that you can't in everyday life? What's it like to live inside your mind? More so, what does it mean to be human in 2025? As a result, shared and collective grief, regret, hope, joy, hurt, love and other emotions are the root of every track here, each named after evocative bits from those quotes. It's stunning and emotionally powerful, even if you don't know the back story, with the artist now intent on continuing the concept through other projects.

Review: Max Cooper's latest album is undoubtedly his most adventurous and expansive work to date. It began life as a commission from the Barbican to produce a hybrid audio/visual piece that could be performed live and took "our obsession with the unobtainable" as its central theme. While the resultant piece is best experienced during one of Cooper's live performances, this album version is still stunning. Mixing neo-classical movements, Terry Riley style synthesizer minimalism, crackling experimental noise, melodic electronica and his trademark brand of emotive, soft touch techno, "Yearning For The Infinite" is a genuinely emotion-stirring sonic journey from an artist who continues to surprise and delight.

Review: During the recording of One Hundred Billion Sparks, his first album for two years, Max Cooper did a lot of thinking. Developed concurrently with a new live show, he says every track on the 12-track set was written "as a score to a virtual story stemming from this system of one-hundred billion sparking neurons which create us". The resultant music is naturally widescreen and epic in tone, with early electronic "movements" - think neo-classical minded ambient soundscapes - slowly making way for more immersive, beat-driven dancefloor fare as the album progresses. It's an approach that pays dividends time and again, whether on the delicately spacey and cinematic beauty of standout ambient cut "Reciprocity", or the more rhythmic pulse of "Emptyset" and the shuffling IDM bliss of "Platonic".

Review: London's Max Cooper has stated that when he plays a live show, he likes to deconstruct the performance into fragments of sound on a granular level, paying meticulous attention to detail. For his Emergence live A/V (that he's been touring for the last two years), he applies these same principles to the visuals; using a variety of MIDI methods that are synced and allow him to manipulate both in realtime. It's the story of how "everything comes from (almost) nothing," using knowledge, theories and insights gained from his previous role as a geneticist. Cooper weaves a together a fascinating auditory experience here, his second album since 2014's Human, covering a variety of sonic moods in his now signature way. Take for instance "Trust" featuring the lovely vocals of Kathrin deBoer and a bit of help from good studio mate Tom Hodge; here jazzy drum and bass arrives via field recordings and classical aesthetics in wonderful harmony. Also, the deep, multi layered and ethereal journey track "Waves" sees Cooper on point, as usual, until "Cyclic" goes for something a bit more ferocious on this broken beat techno exercise where inventive use of sampling and sound design collide with perfect tension and suspense.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***


London's Max Cooper has stated that when he plays a live show, he likes to deconstruct the performance into fragments of sound on a granular level, paying meticulous attention to detail. For his Emergence live A/V (that he's been touring for the last two years), he applies these same principles to the visuals; using a variety of MIDI methods that are synced and allow him to manipulate both in realtime. It's the story of how "everything comes from (almost) nothing," using knowledge, theories and insights gained from his previous role as a geneticist. Cooper weaves a together a fascinating auditory experience here, his second album since 2014's Human, covering a variety of sonic moods in his now signature way. Take for instance "Trust" featuring the lovely vocals of Kathrin deBoer and a bit of help from good studio mate Tom Hodge; here jazzy drum and bass arrives via field recordings and classical aesthetics in wonderful harmony. Also, the deep, multi layered and ethereal journey track "Waves" sees Cooper on point, as usual, until "Cyclic" goes for something a bit more ferocious on this broken beat techno exercise where inventive use of sampling and sound design collide with perfect tension and suspense.

Review: This is the debut album from our new favourite Irish laddy, Max Cooper. Dropping on the brilliant Fields imprint, the LP explores 11 tracks of pure mechanical perfection, blending otherworldly electronica and techno with elements of classical and musique concrete. It's a circular album, where the songs work in unison but also tell a story as a whole. It's certainly a strong debut from Cooper and one which should be approached open-mindedly.