How electronic music’s matrix may look

How electronic music’s matrix may look

1 December, 2009 | 6.10AM

• Written by: Christen Reutens
• Filed under: Videos: max cooper, technology, traum

By and large, dance music struggles with music videos. Without the big budgets of the major label-supported rock, hip hop, or pop scenes, most club hits never see a visual representation, and the ones that do often fail to capture the essence of the original song. Almost invariably, dance music videos involve plenty of T&A, and very little TLC.

Occasionally though, you find a beauty in the YouTube wastelands such as Whiskas fX’ video for Max Cooper’s ‘Stochastisch Serie’ (above).

Andrew Brewer, otherwise known as Whiskas fX, is the animator behind the videos for Max Cooper’s ‘Serie’ releases on the Cologne-based label Traum. He put together the rendition (below) for Cooper’s breakthrough track, ‘Harmonisch Serie’.

Cooper is a PhD geneticist by day, who does research for University College London, and his Serie releases are strongly influenced by his interest in maths and music. Brewer’s moving images in turn illuminate the equations and formulae behind Cooper’s music, as his videos are visual representations of the calculations.

If Cooper’s music successfully identifies a working matrix behind electronic music, then Brewer’s videos might be a window into how that matrix looks, albeit with flowery curtains.

“The term ‘Stochastisch’ refers to randomness and unpredictability,” says Brewer. “For this video I created several different simulations of particle interaction, to represent the different energy levels in the track. All the action you see is rendered within a computer, with lots of physics controlling how the particles move.”

But whilst most would roll their eyes at the thought of letting mathematicians loose on the dancefloor, the video isn’t entirely for nerds. “Max and I wanted to get a kind of mad scientist feel you’d see in a movie – with dust on the lens, grainy film, and numbers counting down on screen. We were very taken by the idea of the monolith at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. 

“The opening of the video, the pyramid, is our version of that monolith. It’s threatening but at the same time it makes the clip less abstract, and gives the imagery a beginning and an end. The pyramid opens and chaos emerges, and then at the end the pyramid closes and the chaos is gone. On such a brooding track, we liked the idea of giving a character to something inanimate.”

Brewer’s mosaic colours and beautifully interweaving shapes are perfectly aligned with the drama and suspense of Cooper’s flowing melodic techno. A simple (but perhaps insulting) comparison is the interactive screensavers you get on computers (like in Windows Media Player), which warp in shape and colour as music increases or decreases in volume, only Brewer’s visuals are microscopically precise with a multitude of variables, that includes intensity, note placement, frequency, and track progression, that go well beyond the linear.

“When you start work on a video, it’s important to think about the mood and how a track makes you feel,” says Brewer. “Max and I talked a lot beforehand about how each video should look, not just the big themes but the smaller stuff like the colour pallette, and the timing. 

“When Max writes a track, he builds the mood note by note, and it’s a similar thing with my videos. We took our time with the video for ‘Harmonisch’, and spent several months investigating different approaches. Even though most weren’t used, it was a great process to sound each other out. It also meant that when ‘Stochastisch’ was ready, we were both prepared, and we could focus on a single idea.”

Of course, one benefit that Brewer and Cooper have enjoyed is that the ‘Serie’ releases have a strong theme to begin with.

“It made sense to me to investigate the maths in this,” agrees Brewer. “Delving deeper into this side of animation allowed me to create material that would take days to do in the real world – assuming you could make it work in the first place.”

The third and final episode of the ‘Serie’ releases is pencilled for April 2010.

Video: Max Cooper ‘Harmonisch’

• (6) Comments
• (2527) Views
• Get Max Cooper 'Stochastisch Serie'