London based musician Max Cooper has been on the fringes of stardom for a while now – many will be familiar with Max and his long-standing residency at UK club night ‘Firefly’, now in it’s 9th year.
Max Cooper is not only a DJ and artist; he is geneticist somehow managing to find time to get his degree, masters and PHD in between his famous Firefly sets.
A musician and geneticist might seem an odd combination, but you can certainly see the influences in Max’s turn-tablist DJ sets, technical production style and abstract research topics.
Max’s personal production career begun in 2006, with signings to Firefly Recordings and Evolved Records, receiving high praise from many other artists, including Dominic Eulberg.
2007 saw Max’s turntablist skills commissioned by none other than the BBC to make a scratch tutorial video, which is available on the BBC Website.
What have you been working on recently Max?
I’ve just finished my new Traum EP (Stochastisch Serie), which is out in November, and another EP for Veryverywrongindeed in November too (along with a Spektre remix!). I’ve also been doing a lot of remix work in recent weeks, for Abe Duque, Dominik Eulberg, Au Revoir Simone, Extrawelt, Bigger Than Jesus and even Peaches! I’ve also been dabbling in quite a lot of techno dubstep crossover sort of stuff, which I’m interested to see how goes down. And I’ve been working a lot on my live show.
How did you/do you balance your academic studies with your studio time?
I just work on either thing as much as I need to on any one day, and luckily both are flexible enough to be able to do that – trying to do music with a 9 to 5 is really difficult. If I get an idea for a track at 3am on a Tuesday I just get on with it and stay up all night. I find that’s the best way to do something creative – if an idea comes gotta get it down before it gets diluted with a nights sleep.
Would you consider yourself firmly rooted in one particular scene or do you prefer not to be pigeonholed? Where do u stand on the classification of electronic music into an ever-expanding list of genres and sub genres?
I try not to be pigeonholed, I think the only way to have any longevity is to keep challenging yourself and your audience. As for classification of electronic music, it’s needed, but it does all get a bit ridiculous doesn’t it.
You’ve recently started playing in a more ‘live’ capacity. How have current advancements in technology helped what you aim to achieve in a live performance?
I’m mainly using Ableton Live and the Akai APC40 for my live show. The APC40 is a new MIDI controller specifically for Ableton Live. I also do all my productions in Ableton Live, so the APC40 gives me a lot of control over my tracks, allowing me to recreate them out.
Who or what would be your singularly most important influence on your production work?
Emotion I would say. I try to convey some sort of emotional message with each track, and the best ones seem to be those with the clearest messages.
Your current top 5 producers?
Jon Hopkins, Stephan Bodzin, Raw Hedroom, Phil Kieran, Apparat
Stealth is celebrating its 5th Year. What is your most memorable moment from the club?
Once I played so “well” that the club caught fire. Actually. Although maybe I shouldn’t say that. Once, a long time ago when I was not well versed on the art of warmup, I played drum and bass as the finale of my “warmup” for Josh Wink. Not entirely appropriate – sorry Josh! I shouldn’t say that either should I. It has to be the DJ competition I did, with the residents from Detonate, Firefly, Spectrum, and Product. I prepared a proper turntablist thing which really did the job, and we had a “cheer-o-meter” measuring the crowd response to judge the winner, so lots of ranting people, bottles of Champagne and all sorts of ridiculum! Oh I almost forgot, there was also the time Rich Thair tried to have a fight with me while I was playing because I dropped some comedy gabba! And I can remember a lot of generally amazing nights, Jojo defreq, Slam, and my recent date with Chamboché and Ben Start being some of the favourites.
And finally, what was the first piece of music you can remember owning?
It was Prodigy – Experience on double tape, I was doomed from the beginning.
Max Cooper Live at Lipse
