Review: British producer Alex Banks returns to Max Cooper's Mesh imprint to present his third studio album. Made in his studio in Brighton, Projections is a diverse nine-track offering taking in styles such as electronica, techno, breakbeat, bass and IDM, and fit for clubs and home listening alike. On tracks such as the euphoric "A Way Out" featuring hypnotising elements underpinned by jungle beats, you can really hear him sonically illustrating the album's intense journey. Other highlights include the dreamy and textured soundscape of "Introspective", the driving techno workout of "What We Have" and the jagged experimental cut "Resonate" where Banks creates an immersive world to get lost in.
Review: No One Really Listens To Oscillators is the gloriously titled new album by Indian Wells, the project of producer Pietro Iannuzzi from southern Italy. The nine track album is released via Max Cooper's Mesh imprint, tackling issues of a sense of incompleteness and societal conformities. From the off-kilter IDM journey "Four Walls", to the dramatic electronica of "Calabrian Woods" and its epic drum solos, and the glassy-eyed and bittersweet ambient closer "Before Life" which was created soon after discovering his wife was pregnant - and starts with a recording of his daughter's fetal heartbeat.
Review: For the deftly mixed audio on Max Cooper's latest conceptual album Unspoken Words, it is accompanied by a visual story which unfolds through 13 short films, directed by a range of visual artists that are all commissioned and directed by Cooper and mixed in Dolby Atmos surround sound. Featuring various aural moods throughout, whether it's the evocative deep house of "Spectrums", the euphoric trance reductions of "Pulse At The Centre Of Being" to the multi-layered IDM experience of "Exotic Contents" or the saucer-eyed wonder of "Everything" - Unspoken Words is Cooper's most revealing work to date.
Review: In 2019 Max Cooper was getting toward the end of a push that saw the producer digging his heels into a most atmospheric, electro-acoustic and experimentally accessible sound. Keeping his progressive and melodic subtleties alive is a remix album featuring HAAi, Fort Romeau, Josh Wink and Rob Clouth to Steffi, Non Square and Max Cooper himself. Fort Romeau chimes in with a synth-fuelled ray of hope next to the syncopated rhythms, tumbling keys and arpeggiated vocals of Rob Clouth's touch. Haai goes deep, dubstep and estranged vocals in her remix, with some classic warehouse acid techno action coming from master of the discipline, Josh Wink. Turkish artist and recent Mesh signee Non Square turns in something reminiscent of that classic Bpitch Control IDM sound next to the straight up deep, lo-fi and banging electro rawness of Steffi's remix. Max Cooper reinterpretation in the mix too!
Review: Delving further into a colourful introspective synthesis by the release is Max Cooper's Mesh label that so far in 2020 has exhumed music from the depths of minds like Rob Clouth, Alex Banks and Indian Wells. Bringing closure to what's been an epic year for Mesh is this all encompassing four-track from Cooper himself; a record born from the first lockdown phase a generation has seen that comes to life through an otherworldly frame of field recordings, harmonies, clicks and cuts to micro-rhythms and trance heavy pulsations inspired by our planet itself. Full of humanity, playfulness and rearing intensity, Cooper's elements here are an accompaniment to a series of short films that take an acousmatic approach to voice, foley sound design and pianos, with the free jazz and orchestral brilliance of "Spike" and "Surge" a high note. Adding to the legacy of music created by the likes of Pantha Du Prince and the percussive end of the Erased Tapes catalogue in "Swarm", Cooper warmly wraps its arrangement in hopeful and luscious tones, alongside the equally sweet notes and melodic bounce of "Reflect" - a track-title and album name that says it all.
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