Max Cooper has carved a unique space as an audio-visual artist with a science PhD and an international reputation as a leading electronic musician.
His work carries an emotional resonance and sensory immersion, often focusing on humanity’s place in the world. He merges electronic music and visual art with scientific enquiry through installations, live performance, immersive audio-visual experiences, a range of digital media and award-winning music videos. His recorded output bridges the divide between electronica and modernist classical, and a performer whose live performances graduate from experimental sets at MUTEK to sit-down gigs in concert halls to playing crushing techno in front of 10000 people at Awakening to the audio visual sensory overload of his 4D shows.
Unspoken Words is Cooper’s 6th studio album and the latest in an impressive back catalogue that dates back to 2007, when he juggled studying Computational Biology with being resident DJ at a local techno club.
In October 2023, Cooper released the Motif EP, a diverse collection of audio-visual ideas, six impressively contemplative and powerful songs that oscillate between Max’s calm, heartfelt reminiscences and youthful remnants of 90’s rave, and a playful precision of dancefloor spirit as he incorporates the sounds of breakbeat, drum and bass and techno. In 2024, he released a new album called Seme – an immersive exploration of Italian aesthetics, music and emergence. It was performed live at the Salzburg Easter Festival and Barbican, London.
He recently supplied the music for a powerful video narrated by Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis and played at COP26, urging world leaders to consider climate and environment in Covid recovery plans. In 2021, he became the first techno artist to play at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
Other work includes commissions from The Barbican, France TV, AND& festival, Waltham Forest Borough Council, and collaborations with Zaha Hadid Architects, The Babraham Institute, and L-Acoustics alongside musical reworks of contemporary classical musicians including Philip Glass, Nils Frahm, Terry Reilly and Michael Nyman and pop artists Hot Chip and Moby.
His label, Mesh, is keenly placed to explore the intersection of music, art and science through interdisciplinary creative collaborations that blur lines between art, mathematics, film, choreography, sciences, architecture, psychology and spirituality.
Max Cooper is a polymath composer whose recorded output bridges the divide between electronica and modernist classical, and a performer whose live performances graduate from experimental sets at MUTEK to sit-down gigs in concert halls to playing crushing techno in front of 10000 people at Awakening to the audio visual sensory overload of his 4D shows.
Few have been so successful in interrogating and furthering the intersection between electronic music, visual art, technology and science in the past decade as Max Cooper. Working with collaborators and large-scale institutions like the Barbican, Zaha Hadid Architects and Dolby Atmos, Cooper has developed a mixed-media approach to creation. Whether walk-through light installations, ground-breaking use of 4D sound, or club-ready techno releases, Cooper’s output of electronic exploration makes use of available technology while referencing that which came before it, and does so in a human way.
His fourth studio album Yearning for the Infinite was created following commission from the Barbican to respond to their annual theme of “Life Rewired”, exploring what it means to be human when technology is changing everything. The project encompasses film and web media as well as Cooper’s typically lush and emotive sonics, brings to life our insatiable desire for more via impactful storytelling, abstract visuals and audio.
Synthesising his interests and presenting it in an accessible way that defies conventional format, Cooper explores concepts of emergence, identity and infinity to create an immersion of sound, vision and concept that can totally remove you from your normal experience of reality and put you somewhere new. At the core, Max Cooper’s mission as a musician, a DJ and an interdisciplinary artist is all about provoking a greater understanding