Pivot City Music, Euphorie Bezirk & Strawberry Fields Presents MAX COOPER (UK)
The two companies join forces again along with Strawberry Fields Festival straight off the back of our Daniel Bortz show, to present to epitome of forward thinking and intelligent electronic music – Max Cooper in the Lord Nelson beer garden, complete with extensive venue design and a full Funktion One rig.
Also joining us is talent from across the board, touching base with companies from Geelong and Melbourne, who share the same like-mindedness.
An uncompromising and individual musician, Max Cooper has carved out his own artistic space between the worlds of emotional dancefloor experimentation, fine-art sound design, and tireless and varied attempts to examine the scientific world through visuals.
The first phase of that artistic development climaxed with his debut album Human on FIELDS in 2014, described by FACT as “impossibly gorgeous,” by Clash as “sumptuous, enticingly beautiful,” by Earmilk as “a religious experience”, and by DUMMY magazine as “wanting you to dance and cry simultaneously, and probably succeeding in doing so”.
Born in 1980 and raised in Belfast, Cooper’s university years saw his first forays into DJing and genetics, leading to a PhD in computational biology while releasing his first work in 2007. Since then, he has left behind his academic career and expanded his musical palette to include psychoacoustics, 3D sound design, field recordings, a focus on melody rare in electronic music circles, and work with artists including noted contemporary classical composers Michael Nyman and Nils Frahm; pop acts Hot Chip, Au Revoir Simone, BRAIDS, MMOTHS and Halls; pianist Tom Hodge and a jazz trio including UK vocalist Kathrin de Boer.
Cooper’s critically acclaimed festival and club performances, and the Human album, draw heavily on juxtaposition: ambient and overwhelming, beautiful and furious, excessive and restrained. His video work engages with scientific concepts including complexity, natural form, heredity, dimensionality, gravitation, emergence, number theory and morphogenesis, and his 70+ released tracks are now joined by 27 video works.
Cooper has now had more than 12m streams of his music, and his festival appearances range from experimental sets at MUTEK and sit-down gigs in Paris, to pounding out techno to 10,000 people at Awakenings and Igloofest. Cooper has twice been one of Resident Advisor’s top 20 live acts, and a Beatport artist of the year. He has a Momentum award from the UK’s PRS Foundation that tips the most upcoming UK artists each year, and his key mixes – an Essential Mix, Resident Advisor, FACT, XLR8R, his “Sounds and Spaces” mix – have had hundreds of thousands of plays.
Joining him on his little daytime expedition include a carefully handpicked local lineup to treat the senses. Leighboy and Handsdown, Lee Roid & Kane Laidley from Euphorie Bezirk, Le’brush & Ruben from Pelican Villa, Karl Devic & Kirk Chetcuti from Arteq, Togar & Jared Drever from Bones Rd, Metwally & Jeantou from Metou, Jewson and Simplicity from MFTP.
Lord Nelson Beer Garden, Geelong December 5 from 2pm onwards. More information and tickets available from promoters from $35. It’s a date.