Max Cooper Live Show | 25/2/20

Happy Pancake day! The best celebration for creeping up on you and still being just as satisfying as you get older. Lemon and sugar is obviously the one and only top tier combination; I've been seeing lots of chat on social media about 'ham and cheese'... flop. No comment. For everyone else except people who spend their pancake day eating that, I have some music bits to talk about. I had my first Printworks of the year on Friday, featuring a live show from the one and only Max Cooper, something I hadn't yet had the opportunity of seeing and was by far the highlight of the night.

I have to admit I missed the first five minutes (bad queues) but the press halls were the busiest I'd seen them for the time we'd gotten in there for. As I got in, the opening from 'Seething' was reverberating across the masses of people. The thing to note about Max Cooper is that many of his tracks are accompanied by innovative, authentic and fascinating visuals, working with a myriad of directors to achieve visual representation of his art. The parity between sound and image was apparent from the beginning, and as the ambience settled the crowd, these brain-like images pulsated and contorted on the screen, shifting in hue, size, angle. It was eerie, and as the song descended into more aggressive waters, we then shifted into a section of industrial techno. The visuals switched to black and white and stayed that way, starting off with polygons and vectors and then depicting some sort of machine, with cogs and pipes and displays.

It was certainly commanding, but it crossed my mind at that point that it certainly wasn't anything groundbreaking for what I'd seen on that screen. As that thought came to me, there was a sudden silence and blackout. The great thing with live sets is these moments are more standard, and can be used to punctuate the statements being made in the music. Your anticipation builds with every second of nothingness that passes, until it began to break with the scuttling percussion that opens 'Order From Chaos'. It being one of my favourites, I started to get overexcited and cheer, but was immediately struck into silence as without warning an explosion of bright, garish colour beamed out from the screen. A gasp in unison indicated the thousands around me felt the same, and as the dense texture drops back to solo percussion again (as at 3:20 on the track) it really began to get interesting. What starts as a collection of misshapen circles collects together into a cell, fusing together with others and forming larger clusters, ever-expanding and transforming endlessly until a dense wall of neon light stands tall in front of us, and then the process begins again. Tiny jellyfish float across the screen, plant-like structures, all centring on a clear theme of life as the track frantically chatters along, symbolising the title in the pandemonium that forms life. 

Another silence, and then the message is relayed again. 'Perpetual Motion' marks acknowledgment of 'Yearning for the Infinite', his new album from last year which I'd really, really recommend listening to. I nearly made a blog post solely inspired by 'Repetition' but never got round to it. The music video from Nick Cobby plays in its entirety, giving us a bird's eye view of human life around various circular structures. It's continuous; life goes on and one, just as the cycles of cells we've just witnessed, and the repeating loops of his music. Even the teeming press halls we stood in, bursting on all sides with people, is so very symbolic of the constant movement of people, of society, of life. The moment was uplifting, dazzling, and of course was seen off by the heavier beats for the rest of the set, keeping the roots of dance entertainment strong. 

Floating Points provided a stellar set afterwards, surpassing Koze's headline quite substantially. He was leaping around behind the decks like a nutter, bringing out real disco and house anthems one after another, and slipping inbetween these and a more synthesised sound fluidly. It was loud more than anything, the drops were fat and the lights were swinging around in all directions, almost making it feel like an afterparty to Max Cooper's show. On that note, I also wanted to mention the event I went to after Printworks, providing polar opposite vibes. Studio 9294 is like the hidden away backyard of Hackney Wick in comparison and DJ Bus Replacement Service played to no more than sixty of us. Wearing her Kim Jong-Un stage costume, the intimacy was fused with utter weirdness. Simple, sometimes disturbing, visuals were projects from a single source onto the back wall, and it may not have had a single percent of the production value of Printworks, but as you'd expect the creativity filled the gaps. Seamless and clever transitions would make you forget you just moved from minimal to smooth jazz after a few seconds, and there was a huge emphasis on hard dance. It was unusual, but considering the basic resources available, the skill and out-of-the-box thinking was captivatingly impressive.

Albums have begun to drop left right and centre, so I just want to mention a couple. Grimes dropped 'Miss Anthropocene', which honestly doesn't feature that much new music as the majority of it had been released as singles, but it's still been nice to listen to it altogether. The album has sombre undertones seeded within her 'ethereal' sound, as she calls it, and the out-of-world extravagance contains some very human emotions. 'Delete, Forever' is the pinnacle of this; a heartfelt lament accompanied by acoustic guitar no less. She's said it was a tribute to 'losing friends to the opioid crisis and the self-hatred that arises when the grieving process mimics the behaviours that cost your friends their lives', really bringing out the pathos in the lyrics. King Krule's album 'Man Alive!' has made up the majority of my listening in the last week, holding in perfect parity the uncontrollable grit of rage and the feeling of reclining in your favourite chair. I've been seeing 'Stoned Again' getting the majority of praise, but while the emotion is at its rawest there, 'Energy Fleets' and 'Comet Face' are the most musically interesting for me (shoutout Peckham Rye in the latter!). The album art is peng, and the visual animations are fittingly unsettling.

Okay, gonna have to stop there because I'm going on a bit. I'm thinking to do an in-depth album review properly instead soon for a change, got something in mind. Here's a playlist update for you, featuring some of the work highlighted above. Have a great rest of the week! xx