Unspoken Words is a work of art that not only shows how skillful in details Max Cooper is as a musician, but also how passionately he can express himself through music.
Amorphous and varied while aesthetically cohesive
Earlier this year UK audio-visual artist Max Cooper has released his new album called Unspoken Words through his label Mesh. The album artwork anticipates that the array of sounds produced on this musical piece is quite amorphous and varied while aesthetically cohesive. It is a tremendously beautiful and delicate album.
The release starts with an ambient track, homonymous to the album, to which the lack of beats brings not only an ethereal and contemplative context but sets the tone for the listening experience by saying the artist speaks through emotion in sound. And to achieve it he uses not only electronic synthesis but the human factor. The soft repetitive vocals sang by Kotomi on “A Model Of Reality,” combined with also scattered synths and broken percussive elements, gather in such a light form that recalls to a mixed aura of Lali Puna, Four Tet and Apparat. On the other hand, appealing to a retro-futuristic side of electronic music, “Ascent”—as well as the later track “Small Windows On The Cosmos” and the final one “Stream of Thought”—could easily be on a Vangelis soundtrack album as its layered synth pads grow in such a 70’s movies tempo. Up next, although the main synth timbre and 4×4 beat in “Spectrum” guide us back to today’s time, it keeps the album flow as of a spectator watching patiently as the world turns or, as the next track references, contemplating the pulses of life.
A tremendously beautiful and delicate album ::
“Symphony In Acid” is a delightful statement on what’s to come, as the artist shows his production skills are strongly linked to IDM as it progresses drilling beats through bleeps and a pleasing acid lead. “Exotic Contents,” my favorite one, loads a new energy stream in the album as it keeps changing its beat to melody dynamics. Props to Max Cooper’s inventiveness on creating short silent gaps that leave the listener with an odd feeling of a skipped beat. It’s funny how I’ve been enjoying this track particularly since its release in February as a single, before the album was out, but as I listened to it closely now for this review I was surprised not to have noticed before that there are some very quiet whispers on it. That’s why I love multilayered channel loving producers that make it for us an ever changing listening experience.
Continuing on the B-side varied set of tracks, even though “Broken Machines Broken Dreams” rides the dance-floor motif with a resemblance to the minimal techno era and “Solace In Structure” pays tribute to drum and bass, both tracks make usage of the micro sampling technique while presenting distorted percussive shot sounds common to the IDM sound palette. Pushing towards mixed feelings of joy and deep sadness, “Everything,” a dirty synth-wave tune, is one of the album’s high-points—its music video is an amazing collage of how rich our memories can be—only leaving space for the ending track to close it on a mindfulness state. As I said before, Unspoken Words is a work of art that not only shows how skillful in details Max Cooper is as a musician, but also how passionately he can express himself through music.
Unspoken Words is available on Mesh. [Bandcamp | Purchase]
