Max Cooper - Yearning for the Infinite Remixed (2021)

Max Coopers’ Yearning for the Infinite Remixed album

Features remixes from HAAi, Fort Romeau, Josh Wink, Rob Clouth, Steffi, Non Square and Max Cooper himself.

Note: Penrose Tiling (Max Cooper Remix) is available as instant grat with the pre-order of the album.

Max Cooper’s Yearning for the Infinite Remixed is a response to a call from Cooper to provide a different sonic interpretation to his 4th studio album, Yearning for the Infinite.

The remix package wields a collection from fearless electronic creators, pushing the boundaries of their own disciplines. It’s an eclectic display of club-focussed dance music from HAAi, Fort Romeau, Josh Wink, Rob Clouth, Steffi, Non Square and Max Cooper himself who turns in a rearranged, bass rolling, micro-glitch-funk version of ‘Penrose Tiling’.

Each remixer has chosen a track of their choice, one that they felt they could imbue with their own musical identity and emotion. The tracklist hops from impressive percussive swinging arrangements and huge euphoric drops from HAAI, a wonky signature techno roller from Josh Wink, murky IDM twitching and vocal stabbing from Rob Clouth, swathes of acid lines and 4/4 techno from Steffi, an abrasive up tempo synth laden interpretation of “Repetition” from Istanbul artist, Non Square and an end-of-the night hands up love iteration from Fort Romeau, whilst all embracing the pleasing signature sonic motifs from their originals.

The Australian-born London-based DJ HAAi’s blistering remix of “Scalar” featuring Alison Moyset recounts, “ I really loved the original track as well as being a long time fan of Alison Moyet so remixing this was a no brainer for me. I love the textures Max Cooper creates in his music and I really ran with that. The way I work when in the studio is that I’m constantly thinking of it in a live setting, so the ultimate pay off and when you know the track is fully released, is when you are able to play it in the environment it was made for. Can’t wait!”

Max Cooper also adds his thoughts about the project, “Remixing has always been an important part of electronic music for me, I love the creative collaboration and extended realisation of the potential of musical ideas. In this case, hearing remixes of my Yearning for the Infinite album by many of my favourite producers there's the excitement of hearing the album turned into club ready format right on time for re-openings. Following on from her massive Chemical Brothers remix, the worlds hottest remixer HAAi starts with something of a masterpiece, Rob Clouth on point with his extreme intricacy and godlike production, the absolute legends of the world of electronic music Josh Wink and Steffi delivering massive examples of their work, Mesh's own Non Square with his huge bass presence, and another all time favourite, Fort Romeau has turned himself to Perpetual Motion with a summer rave classic bite of vocal treatment.
There's got to be something in there to love!?

I decided to do the slightly odd thing of remixing my own track for the package too. Penrose Tiling had a load of intricate percussion which was a little hidden behind the melodics in the original, and I wanted to see what happened if I went fully down that dnb glitch percs route. It turned into something which has become a peak moment in sets recently, I hope some of you enjoy that too.”

The artwork has been created by bio-mathematician Martin Krzywinski and is entitled ‘6 tree maps of pi'. Each remixer has been given their own tree map visualising a different number of the digits of pi to yield ever increasing image complexity as further digits are added. This visualisation was part of Martin's work for Max Cooper's Yearning for the Infinite album project, in this case, revealing the supposed infinite patternless complexity of a simple deterministic system central to our world.

The original Yearning for the Infinite project started as a commission from the Barbican in London, around their annual theme ‘Life Rewired’, an enquiry into technological advance and its impact on society. Max wanted to boil down to principle which he could visualise. Cooper found great reward in looking for the fundamentals of nature, both aesthetically and in terms of his own learning. This question of our constant quest for knowledge, growth, improvement, materialist, financial and personal gain, it was all indicative of the fact that we use the infinite as an endless source of meaning. A meaning which can be constantly in flux, rearranged and remixed.