REFLECTION: MAX COOPER LIVE

The performance Max Cooper gave at Paradiso somehow left me feeling hopeful about finding a home in electronic music.

Can I tell you a little secret? I really don’t know much about techno or electronic music. My awakening to electronic music was like many of you: I just followed my friends to different parties, eventually curating a sensibility to certain genres that I liked most. If I were to distill what I enjoy about club life or night culture is that I appreciate seeing people enjoying themselves together. Throw in a good beat, my hands will be up in the air as high as the next person. Music is at the base, the foundation of what makes a good event, but I’m obsessed with all of it. In other words I am intrigued by spaces, the people who enter them, what the lights are doing, how much fog is coming out of that fog machine, what people are wearing, where the bathrooms are at, who’s dancing and who’s not dancing, are there queer people or people of colour at the party, how does the music sound in the space, what are the visuals (if any) evoking in dialogue with the music, what is the DJ trying to say, what narrative is she weaving?

With this mind, starting 2025 with a live performance from Max Cooper at Paradiso felt quite special. I am not a Max Cooper stan by any means: I don’t know much about his history or back catalogue but the performance he gave last week somehow left me feeling hopeful about finding a home in electronic music.

Cooper’s two-hour plus live set was a blend of electronic sounds that worked seamlessly with visuals that took the spectator on a journey not dissimilar to Fricke’s 1992 documentary Baraka. In our increasingly visual world and the more recent turn of raves being presented like concerts, the pairing of the intricate visuals to the music worked well to give us something to focus on other than Max Cooper himself. For an event that featured live techno music, I was amazed to see the sold-out room at Paradiso with dancing bodies that rarely moved from their positions for the duration of Cooper’s set. This signalled to me that this was not just a party but a performance, an invitation to come together and dance and listen in a heightened format. Perhaps it was the predominantly slightly older group of techno aficionados that made the event so civilized and meaningful though there were certainly many younger individuals interspersed in the crowd as well.

Colourful mutations of cells, geometric shapes of vibrant matter, stars that turned into glaciers of galaxies from the depth of the ocean, the brilliance of the visuals impressively worked in tandem with the journey of ambient noise the swelled at times with orchestral dissonance, finding resolutions in four to the floor rhythms or progressing into harder beats. The set seemed to work almost like a sonic representation of a dissertation or lecture, Cooper presenting us with an idea that he disseminated or explored. After every “conclusion” the crowd would erupt in claps or whistles and the visuals would momentarily pause, illuminating the DJ/Producer from behind the scrim for a quick acknowledgment.

I was particularly tickled by the final “chapter” that explored sounds and rhythms of broken beat and drum and bass. As I’ve gotten older there’s something about the syncopated chaos that I find charming, for lack of a better word. I truly mean this endearingly because it felt good to move my body in a bouncy, circular way. After some of the frenetic energy of sections of the set, it was joyful for my body to fall in sync with the music, and a feast for the eyes to not only watch the visuals but to witness the bouncing bodies below (I was situated in the balcony) percolate with pleasure.

Not all visual concepts were so abstract. A moment was dedicated to challenging the audience to acknowledge our consumer, capitalist society and our conditioned desire for unrelenting, soul crushing busy-ness. I even felt “called-out” while filming a portion of this segment while it explicitly depicted humans being obsessed with their phones, not being able to live in the moment. For a visual live performance I was surprised at how little people used their phones and if they did it was quite respectful and people made sure to put them away quickly to enjoy being in the space. There was one old man seated in the balcony who recorded most of the performance and I have to say I was not mad about it. Maybe this is also a testament to Amsterdam and the reverence the Netherlands has to electronic music, but I was touched to see many senior people engaging with nightlife, being a part of the experience. I recently saw a part of an interview where Bjork said that she’ll be raving till she’s ninety and I really believe that’s how it should be. To engage with techno and EDM (or Intelligent Dance Music) is something that I hope I can continue to do throughout my lifetime.