Max Cooper at Holocene, Portland, OR, 22 Sept 2012

Max Cooper killed it last night at Holocene. He was in town as part of the Resident Advisor tour alongside fellow headliner Martyn. I like them both, but Max was the main draw for me. I consider myself a fan although I realized yesterday evening that I only actually have 2 of his EPs. I promptly remedied that on Emusic by snatching up a whopping EIGHT that I had missed since Expressions. I didn’t even have a chance to listen to any of it outside of the car ride to the venue…

Max’s set was about 90 minutes long and he managed to cover some broad terrain. He played plenty of the melancholy, melodic techno he might be best known for, but he threw down plenty of surprises. Lots of real-time glitching with Ableton, weird fucked up sputter breakdowns, some half-beat surprises with a nod to dubstep, some downtempo vocal abstractions, and more. I danced pretty much the whole way through.

Martyn started around 1am and I lost steam. The beginning of his set had some nice uptempo techno/house crossover jams but my feet were worn out by then… next time!