Max Cooper

Max Cooper crafts intricately layered experimental techno shaped by his scientific training. His live presentations pair the music with a fully immersive three-dimensional audiovisual production, while he separately conceives and presents light-field installations. Launching his recording career through a run of carefully constructed tech-house EPs issued in the late 2000s, he later broadened his palette by weaving post-rock and neo-classical textures into large-scale albums, among them Emergence in 2016. Extensive joint work connects him to vocalist Kathrin deBoer of Belleruche and composer Tom Hodge of Piano Interrupted, and he created the 2020 album Glassforms together with pianist Bruce Brubaker.

He first took up DJ duties in the late 1990s and turned to production shortly afterward. After earning a PhD in computational biology from Nottingham University in 2008, he held a genetics research post at University College London while spending evenings on beats and club sets. Even while maintaining both roles, he issued ten EPs from 2007 to 2010 through outlets including Evolved Records and Traum Schallplatten before committing to music on a full-time basis. Additional EPs appeared through the end of 2011 on Last Night on Earth and Herzblut Recordings. Cooper also became a prolific remixer, offering distinctive reinterpretations of tracks by Au Revoir Simone, Sasha, Hot Chip, and Michael Nyman.

Maintaining an intense schedule, he joined visual artist Whiskas fX in 2012 to produce experimental video pieces and issued further EPs, among them the Braids collaboration Conditions One. That EP marked one of the earliest releases on the London-based Fields label, which later handled much of his output. With Tom Hodge of Piano Interrupted, Cooper issued two volumes of the Fragmented Self EPs in 2013. His debut full-length, Human, arrived in 2014 and contained the Braids track “Automaton” plus two songs featuring vocals by Kathrin deBoer of Belleruche. Two Inhuman remix EPs followed. Cooper and deBoer also recorded Tileyard Improvisations, Vol. 1, an electronic jazz EP that included trumpeter Quentin Collins. At the close of 2014, Traum assembled his earlier material for the label into the digital anthology Traum Collection.

Cooper and Hodge issued the Artefacts EP in 2015, which was succeeded by a remix EP. His second album, Emergence, came out on his own Mesh imprint in 2016 and featured further contributions from both Hodge and deBoer. Emergence Remixed and the Chromos EP appeared in 2017. In 2018 Cooper compiled the Balance 030 mix for Balance Records, spotlighting artists he admires such as Tim Hecker and Rob Clouth. That summer he released his third album, One Hundred Billion Sparks, whose concept centered on the visual imagery of life’s origins and the role of neurons. One Hundred Billion Sparks Remixed followed in 2019 with contributions from Synkro and Roly Porter. Later the same year he delivered his fourth album, Yearning for the Infinite, which examined the human impulse to chase the unattainable; the Barbican commissioned the project, and it appeared in November 2019. Glassforms, his collaboration with pianist Bruce Brubaker that incorporated several Philip Glass pieces, was issued by Infiné in 2020. The Earth EP also surfaced that year, and Maps, featuring vocalist Samad Khan, arrived in 2021.