Review: Max Cooper at East Perth Power Station

Max Cooper at East Perth Power Station
Friday, February 6, 2026

It’s that magical time of year again in Perth—with the new year getting into the swing of things, the end of summer approaching, and lots of festival fun to be had around our little city. Fringe is fading out, and Perth Festival is firing up! Following on from its acclaimed debut last year, the wonderful industrial surrounds of the old East Perth Power Station roared back to life as the buzzing hub of the festival. Its monolithic structure illuminated in the night sky on the bank of the mighty Swan River.

One of the big drawcards on this year’s bill was electronic artist Max Cooper, bringing his full immersive 3D/AV live show. An elusive and unique producer of note, Cooper was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Australian parents. With a scientific background, including a PhD in computational biology from the University of Nottingham, Cooper made the move into electronic music production, which is evidently inspired technically and thematically by his studies.

He’s a sonic adventurer who’s been making emotive electronic music, remixes and collaborations for over ten years with everyone from Hot Chip, Sasha and Rodriguez Jr to Au Revoir Simone and Michael Nyman.

Cooper belongs to that elite breed of talented modern producers who craft unique electronic soundscapes—luminaries like Jon Hopkins, Nils Frahm, Amon Tobin and Ólafur Arnalds—electronic artists, musical maestros, polymaths and visionaries who transcend genre, eclipsing such menial terms as ‘house’ and ‘techno’. Combining classical approaches with cutting-edge electronic exploration, such basic boxes cannot describe the widescreen sounds, emotional depth and power of Max Cooper’s music or describe the next-level, overwhelming, sensory-overloading, audio-visual extravaganza.

There was no support act on Friday, with the sold-out crowd packing out the main stage area. Taking to the stage just before 9pm, Cooper appeared at the back behind a small table of equipment, with a transparent curtain in front and little light. The ‘credits’ for the show were projected onto the side corrugated iron wall to the right, as the ambient sounds of Leon Vynehall’s Midnight On Rainbow Road emanated from the speakers. A kind of precursor, announcing that the show was about to commence.

A spattering sound emerged, softly at first, before getting louder, as suddenly the stage lit up to cheers from the crowd. Slowly morphing, cell-like, colourful shapes and patterns were projected onto the stage screens, front and back, then extending onto the side wall. The spattering sound was in fact rain hitting a windowpane, sampled by Cooper, with the drop hits quantised to a beat grid pattern, giving it an eerie, unnatural rhythmic structure. The harmonic tinkling of wind chimes joined in with a wash of synth rising to a crescendo before a heavy breakbeat dropped. The visuals exploded to life in some kind of embryonic, big bang fashion, and the crowd sprang to life accordingly. It was Order From Chaos, a highlight from Emergence, Cooper’s 2016 album, and a fine way to kick off the set and usher us into Max Cooper’s dark realm—one we would explore for the next two hours.

Moving through many genres and styles, the show’s custom backdrops and visuals added another dimension to the sounds. Melodic house mixed with tough techno and even liquid rolling drum ‘n’ bass, but he managed to keep a nice cohesive flow throughout the set.

He slowly worked up the tempo and intensity of the music, along with the visuals, dropping the more progressive, lush sounds of Cooper’s own remix of Devil’s Elbow by legendary house DJ and producer Nick Warren, from 2013. Giant, bulbous, organic, brain-like shapes expanded and contracted, spinning and floating on the screen.

The more straight-up, stomping, acid techno sounds of True Under Certain Conditions from his most recent 2025 album, On Being, raised the bar again and got the crowd dancing.

A highlight was the soaring, euphoric track A Moment Set Aside, from his recent collaborative EP with his like-minded pal Rob Clouth, 8 Billion Realities, released on Cooper’s Mesh label. A truly majestic hands-in-the-air moment where the music and visuals came together, as it looked like we were flying through a sea of exploding, kaleidoscopic galaxies.

Like a modern-day classical composer, his music flows in sweeping movements. Intricate arrangements that he conducts from behind his banks of equipment. A one-man symphony orchestra. From epic, magisterial highs, breaking it down to minimal arpeggios and waves of synth, before building up to ferocious walls of noise.

It was then back to some drum ‘n’ bass business with the heavy sounds of Abyss from Belgian trio Bredren, which flowed into his collab with vocalist Kathrin DeBoer, Forgotten Places. Her sweet, lilting vocals are reminiscent of Lou Rhodes from Lamb, and are a nice foil to Cooper’s throbbing bass and beats. He knows how to build a set and work with contrasts and dynamics to keep things interesting.

He really draws from a rich and diverse palette, dropping the magnificent Perpetual Motion from 2019’s Yearning For The Infinite, set to bird’s-eye-view graphics of cityscapes with cars and people buzzing around, before ending on a massive high and dropping another highlight with his awesome remix of Josh Wink’s tweakin’ 303 acid house classic, Higher State Of Consciousness.

He returned for an encore with the sparse, melancholic sounds of A Sense Of Getting Closer before cranking it up to the max with some hard and heavy driving techno to give everyone one last stomp. Then took us down gently, finishing with the stunningly beautiful title track from On Being, featuring French violinist Félix Gerbelot, complete with the incredible, morphing, pencil-sketched animated video by the amazing Japanese artist Masanobu Hiraoka.

It was a truly remarkable performance from a special talent. Cooper has played some spectacular locations around the world (such as the Acropolis, Royal Albert Hall, the Barbican and Le Trianon), but the industrial environment of the venue, under the stars, seemed particularly fitting. There was some definite synergy flowing through the air. Great work by Perth Festival for bringing his show here, as the likelihood of Cooper making it to Perth with his full AV show otherwise would have been slim. An undoubted highlight of this year’s festival, and any year in general!

ALFRED GORMAN

Photos by Jessica Wyld