jūken
A masterclass in the many moods and modes of contemporary electronic music, and easily in the running for best of 2025. Evocative, emotional, and often thrilling. Out of the churning ocean rises a gigantic wave: beautiful, fearsome, and destined to crash. For just a moment, riding its peak, you can see forever.
t.h.reich
I enjoyed Max' wonderful 3h+ concert in Munich on 2-14-2025 in a pretty small club. I was really blown away by the visuals in combination with the delicate sounds and an amazing audience. After the show Max just met with fans ... Thanks soooo much!
Favorite track: The Sun In A Box.
keef
if you're here you're aware of max coopers impact on idm, electronic music and his numerous attributes as a creative force. undeniably powerful record. it should be known that everything he releases will be a gift to hear with his vision and accolades.
Favorite track: You Couldn't Love Me Enough And I've Spent My Whole Life Making Up For It feat. Niels Orens.
3 X Triple gatefold pressed onto clear 140g vinyl, shrink-wrapped colour printed sleeves and centre labels.
Includes unlimited streaming of On Being
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
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On Being Scarf
Other Apparel
Some lovely new meshy On Being scarfs to keep you warm, by Harry Yates.
Designed in London, worn worldwide.
100% acrylic wool
Approximately 18cm x 156cm
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'On Being' - Limited Edition Giclée Art Print (A0)
Poster/Print + Digital Album
Limited edition A0 Giclée Art Print.
A0 series of Giclée prints printed on 300gsm minuet cotton rag using archival inks. Artwork by Minjeong An. The limited edition print is from Max Cooper's On Being album cover.
Created by Tin Dogs Fine Art Ltd, Brighton, England.
IMPORTANT: For orders outside Europe, shipping costs vary due to package size. Please email [email protected] for a custom quote before ordering.
Includes unlimited streaming of On Being
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
Sold Out
'On Being' - Limited Edition Giclée Art Print (A1)
Poster/Print + Digital Album
Limited edition A1 Giclée Art Print.
A1 series of Giclée prints printed on 300gsm minuet cotton rag using archival inks. Artwork by Minjeong An. The limited edition print is from Max Cooper's On Being album cover.
Created by Tin Dogs Fine Art Ltd, Brighton, England.
Includes unlimited streaming of On Being
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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 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.
credits
released February 28, 2025
Written, mixed and produced by Max Cooper.
Published by Manners McDade Music Publishing Ltd.
Mastering by Chris McCormack at Blacklisted Mastering.
Artwork by Minjeong An
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.
