Contacts:
Management: Anthony Faulkner, The Wild Seeds - anthony@thewildseeds.com
Booking Agent + installations: Marcus Noblett, LittleBig - marcus@lb-agency.net 
Label: Rosy Morris, Mesh - rosyjmorrismusic@gmail.com 
PR: Neil Bainbridge, Neighbourhood PR - neil@nbhd-group.com 
Radio: Matthew Maxey, Enganche - matthew@enganche.co.uk

“I hadn't realised the impact that other people's words on being would have on me”

Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us? 

Over a two year journey, audio-visual artist and electronic innovator Max Cooper has inverted the creative process by collecting hundreds of anonymous quotes, posing deep but open questions such as "What would you like to express which you cannot in everyday life?" and "What is it like to exist inside your head?" 

The goal: to understand what it is truly like to be human right now. The result: his new album On Being, to be released in February 2025 with the first single "Sun In A Box" coming this September 4th. 

With On Being, Cooper aimed to probe under the synthetic surface of social media to "create a snapshot of our minds these days," as he puts it by asking people to share anonymously what they dare not ever say publicly. The result is an emotionally raw and shockingly honest kaleidoscope of confessions, ranging from suicide contemplations to miserable marriages to simple pure loneliness, contrasting with hundreds of anonymous confessions of love and longing.

"I was interested in the way I interact with people for my writing process, which usually involves a one-way communication of feelings and ideas that I later find out whether they resonate with others or not," says Cooper. 

"With this I could start instead with people's thoughts and feelings, what resonates for them, and make my own interpretations of those musically and visually, and then send those back out to everyone. It's more of a collaborative approach to making an album, and more intense."

Grief, hope, regret, joy, hurt and love form the basis for each track, taking Cooper's ever-evolving creative process in a completely new direction - with profoundly intense results. 

"Rendering the experience of being is at the core of what I do musically - but I hadn't realised the impact that other people's words on being would have on me until I started reading the database of thoughts," he says. 

"It was like finding a secret window into everyone's minds, and discovering amongst the chaos, pleasure and pain, the experiences that we all share at different times of our lives, and overwhelming emotions and connections that call out to be explored."

Despite what we see in the maelstrom of rage in the echo chambers of society ‘On Being’ reveals that humans still have an innate need to trust one another and express communal generosity - more easily done from the safety of an anonymous portal. 

"The quotes carried so much weight for me - I interpreted them with my usual musical tools, but as you can hear in the music, everything got more extreme as I dove into the depths of what everyone had to say later in the record," says Cooper. 

The result is a unique work of art that demonstrates unequivocally not only the power of using music without words to express emotions, but the power of words to express what seemed to be inexpressible. 

On Being will continue to evolve as Cooper gathers more confessions to feed into this ecosystem of emotions and to create a new range of art projects and other accompanying works which hopefully will speak truthfully to humanity today - and of who we are and who we can become.


www.maxcooper.net

Max Cooper - On Being

3 Max Cooper - I Am In A Church In Gravesend Listening To Old Vinyl And Drinking Coffee

4 Max Cooper - A Sense Of Getting Closer

5 Max Cooper feat. Aneek Thapar - Exist Inside This Machine

2 Max Cooper - Peace Exists Here

12 Max Cooper feat. Tom VR Mother - Nature Must Have A Different Plan For Me

11 Max Cooper - My Mind Is Slipping

10 Max Cooper feat. Niels Orens - You Couldnt Love Me Enough...

9 Max Cooper feat. Aho Ssan - When I Am Alone With My Thoughts I Am Crushed

6 Max Cooper feat. Tawiah - My Choices Are Not My Own

7 Max Cooper - The Sun In A Box

8 Max Cooper - True Under Certain Conditions

13 Max Cooper - The Missing Piece

1 Max Cooper feat. Felix Gerbelot - On Being

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Max Cooper is an electronic composer, multi-disciplinary artist, music label founder and former scientist who has carved out a unique space in music and visual art.

He holds a PhD in computational biology at the same time as being the first contemporary electronic musician to perform at the ancient Acropolis theatre in Athens and one of the first clutch of musicians to produce in Dolby Atmos.

Cooper has enquired for over 15 years through music, collaborations, and his label Mesh, to explore the intersections between the arts and sciences with installations, performances, immersive experiences, online media, music videos and live events.  Anchored throughout is his emotive approach, connecting how ideas and forms feel, in a manner accessible to us all. 
 
As an artist synonymous with the evolution of club culture, Cooper honed his craft as a DJ with a 10 year residency at legendary Midlands techno event Firefly where he formed a foundational relationship with Architecture Social Club, with whom he still collaborates on extravagant immersive installations.

"I want to encourage the acceptance of electronic music as an art form like any other. Bringing electronic music and abstract audio-visual projects into concert halls, museums and galleries is liberating - the art world opens up doors to communicate in ways that aren’t possible elsewhere."
  
Pivoting from computational biology to electronic music might not seem like the most natural career transition, but for Cooper the commonalities are obvious:
 
"In both fields, you're in a sense, free. Free from the limits of living systems, free from the limits of corporeal sound. The only constraints are in your mind."

www.maxcooper.net 

Contacts:
Management: James Palmer-Bullock, The Wild Seeds - james@thewildseeds.com 
Label: Anthony Faulkner, Mesh – anthony@thewildseeds.com 
PR: Neil Bainbridge, Neighbourhood PR - neil@nbhd-group.com 
Radio: Matthew Maxey, Enganche - matthew@enganche.co.uk