When the crash last occurred I caught up with Max Cooper He has been busy preparing for the release of his album, as he is in talks to release his seventh LP, Unspoken Words, in early 2022. The previous year, he had become the first techno artist to perform on the Acropolis in Athens. This performance is currently available to watch online, and you have to see it to believe it.
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Coincidentally, the song also serves as an exciting preview of one of the many great acts on offer when Simple Things return to Bristol for their popular matinee show on Saturday 24th February To do. The event was last held in October 2019, but following the reopening of the Bristol Beacon in November last year, this year's edition promises performances from the likes of Warmdasher, Gila Band, Giant Swan and Specters.
For his headline performance at Beacon Hall, Cooper will be taking his current 3D/AV show with him, which has been touring since last November. This ambitious project sees Cooper working completely alone, equipped with any number of projectors, and tailoring every performance to the aesthetics and structure of each venue, so no show is the same. there is no.
“In my solo shows, a lot of it is just experimenting a little bit with what can go where and what looks good, but there are two ways to do that. You can also do it with 3D models. Yes, but for my own solo show, I'm a fan of the DIY approach. I love projectors and architecture, so I combine the two to make images move around surfaces in strange ways, and to create spaces. I love using it as a canvas and letting it interact with the space.”
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Cooper adopted a similar approach when it came to performing at the Acropolis. Although he had specifications and photographs for the historic monument, its limestone rock structure provided a blank canvas ripe for experimentation. The translucent gauze screen served as a constant feature, but it was the setting itself that really inspired the show.
“We had this beautiful, huge historical monument with light rocks that you could project and see, so we thought we’d make that part of the show. use space. We have a lot of projectors. The system I've built over the years is very flexible, and with all the content I commission and the people I collaborate with, there's a lot of content I can offer. Send to various locations. I'm very used to trying things out on a day-to-day basis and trying to figure out what works. It gives you a slightly rougher feel than if you were to do everything very precisely. ”
That flexibility allowed Cooper to improvise the show on-site and accommodate unexpected architectural features in a particular venue.
“That's actually part of the fun of a live show for me. It's not just the music, but visually, can I do something that I didn't plan on doing? I kind of know what I want to play. , there's nothing predetermined, and the same goes for visuals. You can send this visual over there, this visual over there, or see what happens if you overlay them both on this side. is fun. If it's exciting and fun, or I can hear people's reactions, I'll do it more. I really like it.”
Cooper is quick to admit that the audio aspect of the show is not a traditional musical performance. He doesn't play the keys, and there are no live musicians on stage with him. Instead, he choreographs live audiovisual performances. DJ/VJ live hybrid.
“For me, the live aspect is the idea of building a story with architecture and space, people and sound systems, taking all the elements into account. For me, the visuals were like an additional part of that, and that became really important.”
Cooper is currently working on his eighth studio album and is already considering how he can build on the foundation laid by his current live shows for future performances.
“It's always like, 'Okay, here we are. How do we build on that?' Rather than throw everything away and start over, we're looking at things like spatial audio and different 3D AV techniques that we've used in the past. We want to be able to continue to use everything we've done, and even with this mess of projects, it's all still there. Can we build it like this?”
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So how does that translate into a festival setting?
“You don't always want to use a gauze screen, because at festivals it can be difficult to set it up, or if there's a lot of light pollution, it might not work well. If you put the image behind it, it can actually become invisible. It can work really well if you can get it very dark because it can, but it depends on how little ambient light there is.”
Beacon Hall is overseen by acoustician Bob Essert and boasts a newly renovated audio facility. His work ensures that the space can accommodate the acoustic requirements of almost any type of music, a particularly exciting prospect for electronic musicians like Cooper.
“It's a joy as a musician to play in concert halls like this that have been treated so carefully acoustically. I've been DJing for 20-30 years in seedy clubs and such. I've heard many great sound systems, but it's always fun to play in places like that because there's so much thought put into it. Musically, I'm more free.”
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The Beacon caters to everything from grand orchestral movements to cheeky industrial electronic music, but for Cooper, there's something particularly special about a dedicated music space when it comes to his unique style of electronic music and live performance.
“Warehouse techno music is warehouse techno music for a reason. You could be in a big warehouse and bang a big kick drum with no acoustic treatment and it would still sound fine. It's like it's minimal rhythmic simplicity and if I start playing my music in that space, it's going to sound shitty, so it needs to be simple. I mean, it needs to be really beautiful and acoustic. What happens when you have a specially treated space is that suddenly you can play music that wouldn't work in other spaces or clubs. It opens the door to musical expression that would otherwise be inaccessible. Masu.”
Scheduled to be the penultimate set of the day, Cooper prepares to get into the party spirit just before local hero Giant Swan takes the stage. So what can Simple Things attendees expect?
“If I'm playing at the end of the day and everyone's going to have a party, let's have a party. Partying in a space like this is a lot of fun. That's another factor to consider. A very beautiful space. So we have to come up with something special for that space. We don't know exactly what that will be yet, but we'll definitely come up with something.”
Cooper's next project is Seme, designed in collaboration with the Barbican, Salzburg Festival and architectural designers Architecture Social Club.
“They're architects, designers, artists, and they have 3D models of spaces. They're positioning, they're figuring out line of sight, and they're doing very detailed designs.”
His work with Architecture Social Club will inform his visuals beyond Seme, but details are being kept under wraps for now.
“It may be a bit of a leap forward, but it follows a similar ethos in that the audiovisual show is not something that the audience sits and watches from a distance. How can we make people feel like they're sharing a space together? I'm sure the word “immersion” exists, but it's a bit overused. How do you take the experience off stage and make it engulfing people and have real depth? That's where the next real development comes from. ”
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simple things will be held at various venues across Bristol on Saturday 24th February. Tickets can be purchased online.
words: paul weedon // @twotafkap
photo credit Alex Kozovoris
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