Spaced out hypnotic techno from one of LA's best.
After launching his party and mixtape series Far Away back in 2012, Cooper Saver has slowly but surely made a name for himself by throwing the best underground parties in Los Angeles, combining unique spaces with proper sound to host formidable guests like Floating Points, Four Tet, Daphni and Ben UFO on the regular. Now the party is into its fifth year and well and truly established, he’s been busy sharing the love abroad, with recent stints in Europe, Australia, Canada, Tel Aviv, plus a Far Away special in Tijuana, Mexico.
Hey Cooper how’s things? I see you just got back from a little European tour… what were the highlights?
Things are good! I’m in recovery mode so just chilling hard. Some highlights include losing my luggage on the flight over, playing in Tel Aviv for the first time, getting my luggage back, returning to London and Berlin, seeing all the homies – good times all around.
Your clubnight Far Away seems to just be going from strength to strength, and appears kind of unparalleled in LA in terms of the acts you’re consistently bringing out. Can you give us a little bit of the backstory of the night, and where you see it sitting within the current LA party scene in a broader sense…?
Far Away is all about finding a unique space and transforming it into a special venue for one night only, and giving guest DJs the room to play a set they normally wouldn’t be able to. The bookings lately are mainly returning guests that we can trust to play all night long (6+ hour sets) – keeps it in the family that way too.
The current LA party scene, especially within the underground community, is growing quite rapidly. There’s so much happening these days with very few venues and it’s super tough to keep up. I like to think we’ve carved out our own vibe and sound in a way. A lot of my friends who throw parties here have done that for themselves too. So I think if everyone is offering something unique and expanding the audience, then we’re sitting in a good zone within the local scene. Fingers crossed we can keep doing this for many more years to come, given the endless challenges the city puts against us.
Your own music has begun popping up a little bit more often over the last year with a bunch of remixes for labels like DFA and Let’s Play House. Where are you at with it currently? Can we expect to hear some original bits at some stage this year?
Maybe the EP will be finished before I turn 60. Nah, now that I’m home for a while I should finally have some of the original stuff wrapped up soon. I slowed down on remixing to make time for this, but being on the road most of the year up until now certainly didn’t help. Going to get it in these next couple months though!
This mix really is an epic journey… was that the idea when you approached it or did it just naturally progress that way? What are some things that we should keep an ear out for?
A little bit of both. I recently played a similar set at Tresor in Berlin and I wanted to recreate a few of those moments in this mix. So I just added to a handful of records that I came home with and basically winged it. I don’t want to spoil anything but I will say I was happy to include the latest from Skee Mask on Ilian Tape. Also the new one from Aussie heroes Sleep D & Albrecht La’Brooy is fantastic. Ibon’s record on Ectotherm pitched down -10% or so. Avalon Emerson’s dreamy remix of Slowdive.
What else is coming up?
I have a pretty mellow summer this year – taking a break from parties, gigs, and heavy traveling to just chill out and work on tunes with friends. We have a couple tape new releases coming out under the Far Away cassette label real soon – next up is a recording of Pender Street Steppers & Beautiful Swimmers from when they played for us last year.
I’ll be opening for Prins Thomas here in LA on June 9th, b2b with Honey Soundsystem, which should be a lot of fun…one of the only things I have planned this summer so far. Touring again in the fall. Disco edit 12” with my friend Patrick out on Common Edit this year. That’s about it for now!