Max Cooper is known for his transcendental, diverse and hypnotic audiovisual shows and has gained a large following as such over the past years. On July 20th, Max himself, together with Nadia Struiwigh and Jasmín will perform at Lofi Amsterdam. We sat down with Max to talk about his music, inspiration and what to expect from his set.

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You mentioned Amsterdam has had a big influence on your work. Could you tell us more about that and why you feel so closely connected to the city?
Amsterdam was one of the first cities I started getting shows early on in my production career, and was somewhere I was warmly received from the start, I had so many great shows and parties and met so many friends there, and generally I just find Amsterdam one of the nicest places in the world to spend time. I’ve considered moving there many times.

How has your sound evolved from your early releases to your most recent album? Are there any specific influences or experiences that have significantly shaped your musical journey?
I started with club music, then violently broke away after feeling creatively suffocated, before returning to somewhere a little more moderate with sprinklings of all of my club influences and other musical influences melded into a pot of multi genre soup. I think my main influences were my early trance records in the 90’s, Firefly techno events residencies in the 00’s, D’n’B and hip hop, DJing and record collecting in the 00’s, Traum schallplatten releases in the 10’s, touring everywhere from then until now along with the development of my Mesh label and it’s approach fusing music, science and art, and my love of experimental, ambient and classical music, which have all formed big parts of what my recipe is at the moment.

You’ve collaborated with a wide range of artists and scientists to integrate audiovisual concepts into your music. Could you tell us more about that?
I love reading about ideas, and I love visual art. At some point I realised a lot of the things I was interested in would make great visual stories for shows, so I started chatting to visual artists and making music for other people’s visual projects as well as my own, whilst I also developed a system to be able to play music and visuals at the same time for my shows. I was very lucky to get to work with a lot of amazing visual artists, scientists, architects, coders etc along the way. I try to keep learning and keep talking to people about ideas, and then things have to be made because we’re excited about the ideas. That’s generally how it goes. If you’re interested in what this means in practise go to unspokenwords.net, emergence.maxcooper.net or yearningfortheinfinite.net 

What have been some of the biggest challenges in your career so far, whether that’s personal or musical and how have you overcome them?
Making half decent music that doesn’t sound like everything else is really hard. It’s an endless challenge, especially if you want some other people to like it as well.

Is there anything outside of music, that inspires you for your music?
Everything. Everything around us, and inside us, is so rich and full of structure and ideas and feelings, it’s all ripe for making music and art from, the challenge is how to choose what to work with. My daily process is to try and look, to really look at what is there in front of me, and to try to appreciate it, rather than getting lost in the grind and forgetting about all the richness we live amongst. That can be the biological system of an ant colony on the pavement, a cloud system, a comment someone on the street makes, the action of someone dealing with the shit life has thrown at them, there’s so much that is worthy of talking about.

How do you develop the visual narratives, and what role do they play in complementing your music?
I read a lot, and make a lot of notes. I have a note pad full of visual and musical ideas, and when ideas start to weave together and fuse into larger narratives, that’s when album projects start to emerge. So I have many album projects always running, and when collaborations, feelings or timings are right I’ll jump in with one or other project and try and get it rendered into musical and visual format. 

As an artist deeply integrated with technology, how do you see the role of emerging technologies in the future of music production and live performance?
Sometimes I play sansula (badly), but more or less my entire creative process is technologically assisted and driven. Our tools are certainly becoming more developed though, with more role for tech and less for human, but art isn’t much fun when you don’t get to make it so hopefully us human’s will maintain a role.

Can you already give a hint at what you have in store for us during your evening together with Jasmín and Nadia Struiwigh in club Lofi Amsterdam?
I’ll be delving into all of my Amsterdam favourites, all the music which has made good times there since my first ever set there. I’m expecting a party vibe as that’s my understanding of the style of the event, so I’ll make a special party of it.

all photography by JAKE DAVIS