- We miss you Nathan Fake. You've left us with this bright paint-splotch hole in our spirit. It's been over a year; we've got to replace you. Enter early 2009's first stand-in, young UK producer Max Cooper—a University student, too, no less. His debut release on Traum, Harmonisch Serie, features some of the vibrant day-journey layouts we'd come to expect from Fake or like-minded artists like Dominik Eulberg. The kind of music that might play out beneath a lush Border Community windmill tableaux, unraveling warm Easter morning narratives in time to misty, still-cold temps. The title track on the A is almost too slippery to hold onto for the way it ascends so simply and directly, slowly gaining speed on warbling, gently corroded noises as Cooper layers in wave after wave of contorted melody. Another English newcomer, Kanio, turns in the remix, keeping the original's pulpy vocal whispers but winding the track more tightly around its central rhythms, removing Cooper's flair for expansion in favor of stickier, more instantaneous pleasures.
On "I" Cooper reclines again, toying with the lush, pixellated grandeur of an old Jesse Somfay track. Cooper's deft with forward motion, enabling himself to seem at once home-ready and itching to move again. In fact, for so much wanderlust and ambient spacing, it's the EP's most subtly determined track, resembling so much swoonsome tech-house while keeping itself still distant, solitary.
On the digital side, Cooper's original "Compact Yourself" simmers on the ping-pong bells and fluorotones that Extrawelt bring to such boil. Again, Cooper shows a knowing compositional certainty for such youth—an A-B-C linearity—without resigning himself to phony peak-time transitions. Keeping with the showcasing of UK talent, English newcomer Ito takes the remix and handles it much like Kanio, swapping out its languorous pacing and sleeping-bag skygazing for more direct dance fare. But you know, this is the Traum wing and not MBF: We're here for that open-lunged sound. As 2009 begins, Traum's got another talent—let's just hope he too doesn't disappear into University life.
Tracklist A Harmonisch Serie
B1 Harmonisch Serie (Kanio Rmx)
B2 I (Short Version)
Digital Bonus: Compact Yourself (Ito Remix)
Digital Bonus: Compact Yourself (Original)