Tag Archives: Mesh

New music – Max Cooper & Rob Clouth – 8 Billion Realities (Mesh)

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adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Acclaimed electronic musicians, producers and sound architects Max Cooper and Rob Clouth team up for a new collaborative EP; a dark, playful four-track dive into ambient, breakbeat and techno’s subconscious flow, featuring a standout vocal performance from South London rapper FLOHIO.

Recorded over a series of spontaneous London sessions, 8 Billion Realities channels years of creative exchange between two of the genre’s most quietly innovative artists and is a result of a decision between the long time friends to refrain from conceptual overthinking in favour of instinct and joy.

As long-time admirers of each other’s audio/visual work, Cooper and Clouth collaborated in London together after both emerging from intense, idea-heavy album cycles. What followed was a series of exploratory sessions, half-improvised, half-built around half-formed thoughts. The result is a club-ready EP that feels alive and human: imperfect and hypnotically rich.

“Rob Clouth has been one of my favourite electronic music producers since I first heard his work in 2011,” says Cooper. “His work is more full of ideas and structure than anyone else.” “We were both coming from extensive conceptual studio albums and both in the mood for simplifying things and having some fun with the music, so that’s what we did”.

For Clouth, no stranger to Max Cooper’s Mesh label having previously released an array of EPs plus his 2020 debut album Zero Point this record marks a new chapter, both creatively and personally. “Something pretty new for me is collaborating,” he says. “You kind of have to know when to stop, because if you develop an idea all the way to its endpoint, the other person has nowhere to jump in.”

The first A Moment Set Aside began as a break from another idea, a live, unplanned improvisation based around arps and ambience. “The track was written in about as long as it took to play it,” says Cooper. “It was pulled from a one-hour recording session, more or less as you hear it… the energy and excitement grew as the unplanned moment bore some magic.”

“The lesson being that sometimes it’s helpful to set aside a moment without forcing results, and let the subconscious have something to say.” What followed was darker, heavier. “Asymptote” is detuned techno. Subversive and euphoric in its descent. “We found a sort of brain mangling, half consonant, half wandering detuned techno pulse, which we started chatting about being a sort of pit of spiralling body parts we were falling into,” says Cooper. “It was a lot of fun to work on and let loose with bigger kicks than I usually ever get to unleash.”

Then came 8 Billion Realities, featuring a standout rap performance from FLOHIO; an emerging figure in the UK grime and rap scene. The track was inspired by conversations about algorithmic echo chambers and hyper-personalised online worlds. Frantic, direct, and South London to the core, FLOHIO brings this tension to life. Her sharp, intense flow cuts through distortion and rhythm, landing the track somewhere between chaos and control instantly making it one of the most striking moments in either artist’s catalogue. “A different reality for all 8 billion of us,” says Cooper. “We weren’t sure if it would work… but there was something about the energy of the percussive idea and the story which felt like it might fit.” “Then FLOHIO had a play with it and straight off the bat absolutely killed it, not just with the lyrics and energy, but the harmonising too, it was a beautiful process.”

The final piece on the EP Candeleda originated from Clouth’s solo experiments with a live rig made entirely of vocals and keys, using his self-developed “cheatbox” system. “He put forward a beautiful stumbling melodic sequence which we bounced back and forth adding harmonies and synth layers,” says Cooper. “It rounds off a collection covering some of the breadth of music that we both love.”

Speaking about the video release for ‘A Moment Set Aside’, Max Cooper states: “We chatted with Dimitri Thouzery about forests as a visual counterpart for taking a moment out to be immersed in rich form. When I’m feeling stressed the forest is my favourite place to go. Dimitri collected 3D scans of nearby forest floor locations and told the story beautifully with a nod towards something greater than just the forests themselves. Thanks for having a look and a listen.” 

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Published post no.2,712 – Saturday 8 November 2025

Switched On – Indian Wells: No One Really Listens To Oscillators (Mesh)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Pietro Iannuzzi’s latest album as Indian Wells may have a humorous title, inspired by a fit of pique while working in the studio, but it contains music of much greater personal meaning.

His concept with the album was to reflect the fact that it is possible to grow up around half-finished buildings that become a part of the landscape without anybody noticing – and that this leads to a distorted reality, that we very quickly become accustomed to.

What’s the music like?

Multilayered and compelling. The distortion Iannuzzi refers to can be felt immediately on the first track, An escalator in a storm (Incomputio Part I), where voices and snatches of sound flit across the picture of what would otherwise have been the serene progress of slow moving musical figures.

Life of JS (Incomputio Part II) has a deeply personal resonance, written about his daughter who was born in early lockdown and found to have Down Syndrome. Research around the condition lead him to the American artist Judith Scott, a self-declared ‘unfinished’ person – and who is the dedicatee of this beautifully cloudy music, with its twists and swirls. Iannuzzi’s daughter also inspired Before Life, the closing track, which starts with a recording of her foetal heartbeat and grows into a really impressive and emotive piece of work, the choice cut on the album.

Elsewhere the music is shot through with movement and positive kinetic energy. Four Walls bubbles and flickers in the half light, while Against Numbers uses its glitchy beats and motifs in a thought provoking way while also cutting loose with white noise.

The title track progresses with a stately poise, the oscillations holding up well! – while Habitat also enjoys wide-ranging squiggles before kicking into a more conventional four to the floor rhythm. Calabrian Woods breaks into this area too, retreating to a warning motto over soft keyboard pads before launching into a full breakout.

Does it all work?

Yes – each track works well in isolation but the album works best when experienced in one setting, with a very satisfying ebb and flow.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Anyone who has enjoyed the music of Max Cooper will surely warm to the music of his labelmate, whose personal experiences bring deeper meaning to this thoughtful but ultimately positive music.

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Switched On – Llyr: Biome (Mesh)

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llyr

reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

‘Nature is the ultimate composer’. This is the standout quote from Berlin-based Gareth Williams, aka Llyr, as he introduces his first full-length album Biome. Natural sounds are the first things we hear, the birds and monkeys of the Borneo rainforest making themselves known and setting the scene for Williams’ thoughtful piece of work.

For Biome is an environmental album as well as a musical one, split into two distinct sections called Pre-Anthropocene and Anthropocene. The first four tracks constitute an ambient celebration of nature and its many qualities, while the second group of four are disrupted by human involvement.

What’s the music like?

Llyr allows the field recordings to flow beautifully from the start, with minimal involvement from his own electronics, but he prompts the slight changes of mood with a natural instinct for structure. The sounds are lovely on headphones, the listener allowed to revel in the unhurried natural processes of the jungle. Particularly striking is the fourth track, Courtship Signal, where the mating calls of frogs in Kubah National Park are replicated and developed.

When the humans get involved the electronics come to the fore, and so do the dance beats. Llyr manages the crossover really well, and unleashes a form of primal energy through the kinetic Intrusion #509, the bubbling of The Hawthorne Effect and a rush of percussion on Interject, featuring Private Agenda, that sweeps all before it. Llyr uses this to show the chaos of the human imprint, having a good time but sweeping away the ambience that went before. Finally Encroachment powers to the finish, and we realise all the while that we have been held under the dense canopy of the forest. The white noise of the percussion enhances this effect.

Does it all work?

Yes. Biome is an imaginative look at the so-called developing world today, and its structure works really well. Essentially it is a sequence of natural ambience, followed by 25 minutes of busy dancefloor action, like moving between two stages in a forest festival.

Is it recommended?

It is. Electronics and field recordings can work together really well in the right circumstances, and this is definitely a case in point. Llyr makes a number of powerful observations about the state of the world today without ramming them down the listener’s throat, communicating them in a very musical way. This means Biome works on several levels, a journey in the truest sense of the word.

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