Max Cooper releases new album ‘Feeling Is Structure

Electronic producer and multidisciplinary artist Max Cooper today unveils his new album Feeling Is Structure, out now via his own imprint, Mesh.

Developed from a commission to create a live show for London’s Royal Albert Hall, Feeling Is Structure explores the relationship between physical form and human emotion. Across 10 spatial audio-visual works, Cooper examines how structure in sound, architecture, biology and art, shapes the way we feel. Musically, it leans into Cooper’s more intricate and deliberate compositional side. Rather than improvisation, the record focuses on carefully designed systems and processes that build evolving sonic architectures. Precise at the micro level, but deeply emotive in impact.

The album is built on the idea that our inner emotional lives are profoundly connected to our lived environment, Expanding on this idea, Max explains:

“I’m fascinated by architects who can imbue brutalist buildings with humanity, or artists who can paint a block of colour representing their soul.” says Cooper. “We have this remarkable capacity to spill ourselves into the world through form. When I began working on a show for the Royal Albert Hall, that connection between large-scale physical structures and feeling took over — and this album emerged from that process.”

The album is accompanied by the release of new single ‘The Shape Of Memory’, a track that distills the project’s core themes into a richly emotive audiovisual piece. Built around a nostalgic synth palette and intricate, irregular detailing, the track centres on a deeply affecting chord progression, evoking the incomplete and shifting nature of memory itself.

“Memories have a special sort of incompleteness which we tried to capture musically and visually,” says Cooper. “I went for a classic retro synth timbre with lots of irregular detailing, but it’s all about the feeling of the chord progression really, that’s where the idea comes through, if you can hear what I mean.”

The accompanying video, created in collaboration with BAFTA and Emmy nominated studio Factory Fifteen, extends this concept into a striking visual form. Drawing entirely on audience-submitted images of personal memories, the team used experimental Gaussian splatting techniques to transform 2D photographs into fluid, painterly 3D structures.

“For the Feeling Is Structure project, I’ve been looking for structures that trigger us, whether it’s architecture, music, visual arts, or even neural patterns. One of the ideas that emerged was the shape of memory,  how we might present our memories visually. We leaned into the artifacts and lossy nature of the imagery as a way of representing how memories are always incomplete and constantly rewritten.”

The project has also been realised as an immersive touring experience, translating the album’s spatial concepts into large-scale audio-visual performance environments, including last month’s show at London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall which sold out in just 48 hours. The London Standard revealed that “In terms of sheer sensory overload, this was it…The artist was on top psychedelic form.”

Feeling Is Structure is out now on digital platforms in Stereo and Dolby Atmos, and as a limited triple-vinyl edition via Mesh. Upcoming tour dates listed below.

Max Cooper performs his new 3DAV Live show from 14-21 May across the UK, part of Music Beyond Mainstream’s 25th anniversary tour programming after his sold out Royal Albert Hall Show. 

“Max Cooper is a unique artist working at the nexus of music, art and science and we are thrilled to be presenting his live show in some of the best independent concert halls in the country, many of which he will be visiting for the first time”. – Nick Reed, Chair, MBM

Dates include: Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Bristol Beacon and Glasshouse ICM and more.

TOUR DATES (MORE TBA)
(3DAV unless stated otherwise)

14 May – Basingstoke, The Anvil
15 May – Coventry, Warwick Arts Centre
16 May – Bristol, Bristol Beacon
17 May – Poole, Lighthouse
18 May – Birmingham, Symphony Hall
19 May – Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall
20 May – Edinburgh, Usher Hall
21 May – Gateshead, The Glasshouse ICM
14 June – County Wicklow, Beyond The Pale
18 June – Dádpuszta, Daad Gathering (Live AV)
3 July – Torino, Kappa FuturFestival

1. Max Cooper: Feeling Is Structure Tracklist

   Pattern Index
   Becoming
   The Shape Of Memory
   Splintered Air Between Us
   Obsessive Compulsive Order
   Bass Mosaic
   This Is A Bridge (with Sorcery)
   Four Tones Reflected
   Ebb And Flow
   Chrysalis

About Max Cooper

Max Cooper is an electronic composer, multi-disciplinary artist, music label founder and former scientist who has carved out a unique space in music and visual art. He holds a PhD in computational biology at the same time as being the first contemporary electronic musician to perform at the ancient Acropolis theatre in Athens and one of the first clutch of musicians to produce in Dolby Atmos.

Cooper has enquired for over 15 years through music, collaborations, and his label Mesh, to explore the intersections between the arts and sciences with installations, performances, immersive experiences, online media, music videos and live events. Anchored throughout is his emotive approach, connecting how ideas and forms feel, in a manner accessible to us all.

“I’ve always had a strong emotive bond with aesthetics, and found at an early age that the purified forms of electronic music carried a lot of weight for me, as did the reductive natural aesthetics of the sciences. That felt connection to both opened up a world I’ve been lost in ever since.”

Pivoting from computational biology to electronic music might not seem like the most natural career transition, but for Cooper the commonalities are obvious: “In both fields, you’re in a sense, free. Free from the limits of living systems, free from the limits of corporeal sound. The only constraints are in your mind.” 

Max Cooper has collaborated with Zaha Hadid Architects, Dolby, L-Acoustics, 4DSOUND, Barbican Centre, W1 Curates, The Babraham Institute and exhibited work at museums including the Pompidou Metz, ZKM Karlsruhe, Museum WaveSeoul and The Science Museum London.