Max Cooper presents Seme
Barbican

ACCLAIMED electronic artist Max Cooper, the nonpareil of audio-visual DJs, performs the UK premiere of new work Seme, his most classically influenced project yet. 

Inspired by the rich tapestry of Italian culture, its art, architecture, music and religion, the show was considered highbrow enough to receive its world premiere at Austria’s prestigious Salzburg Easter Festival of opera and classical music. Cooper said ahead of the event: “I feel like a bedroom DJ has smuggled themselves into high classical culture.”

But Seme is no mere DJ set. Joined onstage by soprano Kim Sheehan, cellist Niels Orens and pianist Tom Hodge, a churchy vibe is evoked with the plaintive Palestrina Sicut and Gabriel; a harmonious marriage of electronica and traditional music inspired by the late Renaissance Italian composer.

They perform behind a giant screen of immersive visuals, courtesy of design studio Architecture Social Club, to create a breathtaking spectacle. There’s shapes and swirls, numbers and sums, science and nature, astrology and maths, religious iconography and nods to secular pursuits, all curated to the tune of Cooper’s unrelenting beat.

Equally beautiful is Scarlatti K141 — a reworking from the baroque composer — that sees Hodge’s bleak piano keys land like raindrops, while Fibonacci Sequence builds from deconstructed broken beats to a wall of sound.

Cardano Circles treads on more familiar territory with stylistic similarities to tracks like Spectrum from previous album Unspoken Words.

The purists also left happy as the two-hour set sees tunes from the 30-minute Seme EP interlaced with crowd-pleasers, including Perpetual Motion and techno banger Void, to exhilarating effect. 

Special mention should also go to pitch-perfect support act Odalie, the French electronic producer Sophie Griffon, who is joined onstage by cellist Paolo Rezze for a mesmeric performance showcasing debut album Puissante Vulnerabilite on Cooper’s label Mesh. An emotionally charged palette of classical ambience and melancholy that is topped by the ethereal We Are Nature.

Max Cooper is on tour. For more information see: maxcooper.net