It's an attempt to distil emotion into sound. Max Cooper's techno ranges from stark electronica remixes of huge bands like Hot Chip and Au Revoir Simone to the fuzzy, buzzing dancefloor sound of his breakthrough "Serie" releases. But it's all, he says, inspired by his need to "match the emotions in the head with the emotion that can come out of the monitors".

That's why he put serious time into perfecting his own unique take on electronica. Before breaking through with the underground smash Harmonish Serie in early 2009 - a Raveline "heavy rotation" track and a top 5 vinyl hit in Germany - Max already had releases on more than 20 labels like Traum, Perc Trax, Autist, and veryverywrongindeed, and he'd been DJing for more than 10 years.

In fact he still holds down two of his earliest residencies - seven years each of roadtesting new material at two English clubs, Firefly and Stealth. But while he first DJed as a turntablist - influenced by hip-hop DJs like Craze and Q-bert - since those first steps into production in 2006, he's irresistibly moved toward a "less-is-more" approach to music.

It's a change also inspired by his day job: genetics. Max was studying science at university when he first started writing music, and for ten years he's kept up a parallel life in science alongside music. He took his PhD at the same time earning the label of "Future Hero" from Mixmag and appearing twice on the UK's biggest dance programs on Radio1. He then worked as a genetics researcher for University College London while he had his first top 10 Beatport minimal hit with "the Shufflebox EP" on Autist, and his first electronica top 5 with his remix of indie band Au Revoir Simone.

But as Max says, it's not two disconnected lives; each has a marked affect on the other. His breakthrough and best-known tracks, the Serie releases - Harmonish Serie, Stochastich Serie and the recently released Chaotisch Serie - were, in fact, inspired by scientific ideas, and Max's fascination with bringing the ideas to a wider audience.

It's not dry theory, either. Each Serie release was turned into startling music video by Max's longterm collaborator, the animator Whiskas fX - with the low-fi, dusty surfaces and wobbly hand-held camera of the videos giving no hint of the monster power of the mathematical rendering used to create each scene. Unsurprisingly, the videos has been Youtube hits - as has the genetics-influenced "mutation through geometry" imagery of Max's new website maxcooper.net.

Max, meanwhile, is now increasingly focused on trying to align the visual and live side of performance - one of the reasons that IDJ magazine named him one of its 10 producers to watch for 2010, with DJ magazine getting in earlier and calling him someone to watch right now. His remixes now stretch across the indie and electronica worlds - Hot Chip, Au Revoir Simone - then straight into the depths of European dancefloors with acts like Extrawelt, Ricardo Tobar, and Dominik Eulberg. His fans, meanwhile, include key DJs like Digweed, Slam, Patrice Baumel, Popof, Pig and Dan, Dubfire, Alexi Delano - and especially Gui Boratto and Hot Chip, both of whom have used Max's tracks for their compilations.

The clubs, also, love Max's productions and his unquestioned ability to create a unique mood as a live act or as a DJ. He's playing an increasing number of techno landmarks like Fabric and right across Europe - Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Zurich, Russia, Paris, and all over the UK and Germany, including headlining the upcoming Gotwood Festival.

"If I get a feeling about a track," Cooper says, "I drop everything and get straight to the studio. I often start something new at 3AM on a Tuesday morning. If I reflect on an idea until the next day, it becomes diluted".

The key to each production, always, is emotion. "Anything can trigger an idea," he says, "a film, light reflecting off a window, anything really. It’s all about bringing together influences and experiences which are individual to you, in order to create something original to you. I don’t believe in the magical creation of ideas out of nothing. And there are no magical chords which make all people feel exactly the same way ..."


May 2010