Max Cooper – On Being (2025) [FLAC 24bit/44,1kHz]

Max Cooper – On Being (2025)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:15:10 minutes | 870 MB | Genre: Electronic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mesh

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.While Max Cooper’s earlier artistic ventures took significant inspiration from science—the result of his education in computational biology—in recent years his focus has shifted towards making sense of the human spirit. This newest endeavour began with crowdsourcing anonymous quotes from the public, in response to prompts such as “What do you want to express, which you feel you can’t in everyday life?” and “What is it like to exist inside your head?” These quotes provide the basis for the music to flourish, as their meanings are fragmented, reflected and reinterpreted across On Being. Cooper explains that this creative process serves as a more direct way for his music to connect with its audience: “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.”

The singular idea or emotion expressed in a given quote often seems to be directly represented within the music: “My Mind Is Slipping” feels like a descent into insanity, percussion glitching and swelling as synth parts move in and out of phase with each other; “A Sense of Getting Closer” creates expectation through a repetitive chord element which grows and recedes over the track’s eight minutes. Much of the music finds form through chord stabs, slow-moving drones, modular effects, highly affected percussive and vocal elements—all hallmarks of Max Cooper’s previous work. But experimentations with Amen break jungle (“My Choices Are Not My Own”) are also present, alongside machine drum techno (“True Under Certain Conditions”) and Indian raga-inspired ambient (“I Am In A Church In Gravesend Listening To Old Vinyl And Drinking Coffee”). It’s always a production masterclass with Max Cooper, but his representation of human expression on this project is fresh and new. Artful electronic music from a veteran talent. – Finn Kverndal

Tracklist:

1-1. Max Cooper – On Being (04:41)
1-2. Max Cooper – Peace Exists Here (04:38)
1-3. Max Cooper – I Am In A Church In Gravesend Listening To Old Vinyl And Drinking Coffee (03:29)
1-4. Max Cooper – A Sense Of Getting Closer (07:52)
1-5. Max Cooper – I Exist Inside This Machine (05:02)
1-6. Max Cooper – My Choices Are Not My Own (04:08)
1-7. Max Cooper – The Sun In A Box (10:45)
1-8. Max Cooper – True Under Certain Conditions (04:33)
1-9. Max Cooper – When I Am Alone With My Thoughts. I Am Crushed (08:31)
1-10. Max Cooper – You Couldn’t Love Me Enough And I’ve Spent My Whole Life Making Up For It (06:40)
1-11. Max Cooper – My Mind Is Slipping (06:44)
1-12. Max Cooper – Mother Nature Must Have A Different Plan For Me (03:47)
1-13. Max Cooper – The Missing Piece (04:16)

Download from filejoker.net: