Max Cooper + Rival Consoles: the future of club music

WILL STONE samples two artists at the cutting edge of audio-visual presentation

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TWO audio-visual (AV) producers at the cutting edge of the art present their own spectacular live shows on separate nights as part of an exclusive in-house programme curated by The Old Market, a premier venue for one-offs in an intimate setting.

Max Cooper is enveloped by projections for his new 3D/AV performance, which follows his latest album, Feeling Is Structure. He is partially visible behind a semi-transparent mesh screen, with another directly behind him that spans out onto the surrounding walls, giving the effect of performing inside a colourful cube.

His venue-customised wraparound projections were developed in collaboration with a number of visual artists, including Memo Akten and Julius Horsthuis, who use fractal animations and geometric patterns that fully immerse the space.

In this incredible setting, Cooper uses light, sound, and architectural mapping to take us on a marathon journey lasting more than two and a half hours. Feeling Is Structure is a notably heavier offering than the anthemic ambient we’ve come to expect from him.

Obsessive Compulsive Order, Pattern Index and This Is A Bridge are all frantic, glitchy IDM, while the dark techno of Bass Mosaic has a Berlin club feel.

He puts his melodic stamp on The Shape Of Memory, Four Tones Reflected and Ebb + Flow, however, and the sheer length of the set gives ample room for familiar favourites like Perpetual Motion. Its video, directed by his long-term visual collaborator Nick Cobby, is a breathtaking visual feast of drone footage over Mexico City.

Cooper’s eclectic mix takes us on a side quest into drum and bass, Enya samples and Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker. You’d have thought the latter would make the ultimate finale, but there’s still more in the tank, and everyone is too transfixed to want it to end.

Rival Consoles (Ryan Lee West) has put out a Blade Runner-esque stunner of a record in his latest Landscape From Memory, with visuals co-created by artist Sky Ainsbury. Yet only a few tracks, including Catherine, Gaivotas and Coda, get an airing. Instead he delves into his extensive back catalogue of emotive techno, as paradoxical as that sounds, which borders on the neo-classical ambient of Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds. Visually smaller in scale than Cooper, with just one projection screen behind him and his synths and sequencers, his sound is nonetheless epic, mesmeric and otherworldly.

It would have been nice to hear more from the new album, particularly the haunting, melancholic Known Shape and Jupiter, but his breakthroughs Recovery and Odyssey are both played to the joy of a thoroughly enraptured crowd. Between them, Max Cooper and Rival Consoles have set a high bar for the future of club music.

Max Cooper and Rival Consoles are performing on December 12 at TESTBED in Leeds. For more information and all upcoming gigs see: maxcooper.net  and rivalconsoles.net

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