Max Cooper interview – “I wanted Mesh to be at the intersection of music, science and art”
Meet electronic music and visual auteur Max Cooper
Scientist, raver, electronic music producer and sound designer, Max Cooper is a pusher of multiple creative envelopes with ambitious, genre-melding ideas uniting them. His new album On Being is the latest chapter in his sonic journey, with the release smashing down walls between artist and audience.
“Usually, my musical process is a one-way mode of communication but with this record, I wanted to start with the ideas from my listeners. Music and art is about sharing and I was suddenly getting all these inspiring, emotive and crazy things back.”
The new record followed previous release Unspoken Words where the album toyed with thoughts from Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. On Being takes this a step forward by drawing on written submissions from Max’s listeners, taken via a website. Over a two-year journey, he collected hundreds of anonymous quotes, posing open questions such as “What would you like to express which you cannot in everyday life?” and “What is it like to exist inside your head?” It’s the responses to these that inspired the productions that make up the record.
“It felt very meaningful to engage with people and make my art a two-way conversation like this,” Max says. “It’s almost like a community project as opposed to a traditional artist album. I find that working with different concepts like this keeps everything really fresh, and there’s no shortage of inspiration – there’s always way too many ideas but not enough time.”
Max is from Belfast but found his dance music teeth in Nottingham, a city with an inspiring and colourful electronic history, from the DiY Sound System to the Wigflex parties. Heading to the city to study, he became immersed in Nottingham nightlife, initially via jungle before falling for hip hop, breakbeat and techno.
“Nottingham was my education in all different types of music,” Max says. “Clubs like the Bomb and the Marcus Garvey Ballroom were really important. I had a residency for ten years at the Firefly where I had my techno education, people like Dave Clarke, Green Velvet, Ben Sims – I was playing more breakbeats but it left a huge influence on me.”
“Lukas Wigflex is a big inspiration and always used to come to our events as a raver. He’d always ask me to play something weird and experimental, to push that melodic, techno bass that they play.”
It’s an eclectic creativity and curiosity that Max is now known for with his music reflecting an ever-swirling cauldron of ideas, inspiration and influence.
Although he’s been releasing music since the late 2000s, the launch of his Mesh label in 2016 was an attempt to transmit his creative ideas across all sorts of formats through one platform.
“I wanted Mesh to be at the intersection of music, science and art, where music can be part of these bigger projects. I was previously making techno music for clubs, I still love playing in clubs but creatively I was feeling like there was more for me out there. I want to make glitch, ambient, noise … and Mesh allows me to express myself as fully as possible.”
The initial notions surrounding On Being began with open-ended questions which led to a huge number of responses, a reaction Max didn’t expect from the project.
“I was looking to explore what is going on in people’s heads and had no idea if we would get any submissions,” he states. “We left it on this website where you could submit something. A few months later I went to this database and was blown away by some of the crazy words people had submitted. It had a heavy emotional impact reading through the thoughts and the record is my attempt to do justice to what people submitted.”
While responses deviated between despair, the weird, wonderful and more positive thoughts, Max was keen for his record to be a true reflection of what it means to be a human in our world.
“This album is a snapshot of our shared psyche as humans,” he says. “It’s challenging right now and it should reflect that but the music should be cathartic and helpful too.”
The record is just one element of the project with an interactive installation and AV live show also coming to mark its release. The interactive piece was created with Ksawery Komputery and Minjeong An and invited attendees to add their own thoughts in real time. Through these latest iterations Max is hoping to continue the dialogue of On Being going.
“The website will continue with us gathering ideas and this will feed into the installation,” he says. “Maybe we can open up the database to remixes and reinterpretations while a lot of the new visuals will bring in the quotes too.”
The creative process was divided between a technical process to a submission alongside a more emotive response. With the track ‘My Mind is Slipping’, Max aimed to play with the sense of confusion and mental overload suggested by the quote by playing chords where the individual notes shift out of time to create new rhythms. In ‘A Sense of Getting Closer’, there’s a feeling of terror and excitement that he responds to in the track’s structure.
“It’s good to mix up these dual approaches,” he explains. “The process of finding out which works best is very intuitive for me and mixed between software and hardware.
The vast majority of all the core elements are hardware synths, there’s a lot of layers, then digital processing comes later in Ableton. Whenever I can, I like to get away from the screen when making music – I find it helpful in getting closer to an emotion.”
As a creative, Max has a huge amount of experience working on projects, sourcing inspiration and moving ideas from himself and into the public realm. He sees de-stressing during the early stages of any project as a great way for aspiring musicians and producers to engage with their work.
“I like to feel creatively free to begin with,” he says. “Which is why I use hardware a lot at the beginning of something. I like to commit at the start in a way that working on the computer often hinders me from doing.”
“You have to try and spill as much out of yourself as possible, capture it, then worry about its quality at a later date. Removing any critical thoughts and giving yourself the freedom to experiment is essential.”
Persistence is also another quality Max feels creatives need to hone. Behind the well-curated online presence and completed projects are years of toil and hard work.
“It can often appear from social media that something was easy to do but for years I was knocked back constantly,” he says. “It’s important to acknowledge this so everyone knows how challenging it can be – but this is part of the process, you need to find your way through and this is what gives you your identity. Sometimes a piece of music comes easy but sometimes it’s painful, and that gives a certain flavour to a piece of music.”
This dedication covers every aspect of Max’s work – he’s known for his tech-inspired live show with a new 3D/AV live show coming at the Camden Roundhouse on March 14. Its design is keeping him occupied at the moment while he will be taking his music to Crystal Palace for Polygon Live, what is billed as the UK’s first fully specialised, 360° immersive festival. It underlines how he’s constantly looking to what comes next.
“Being a musician is just one small part of it – there’s so much technical side going on behind it,” he laughs. “For my live shows, I turn up by myself as I do everything from the music to the visuals, even the tour management. I get asked about my team but that’s just not the reality. I find you have to do things yourself to make things work. You have to be a jack of all trades.”
Jim Ottewill
Buy your copy of On Being – released by Mesh on February 28 – by clicking here