Brooklyn Paramount, New York The super-producer, whose big name collaborators include Charli xcx and Beyoncé, goes maximalist for a euphoric, high-energy Friday-night triumph Everyone is trying to out-scream and out-diva each other at AG Cook’s sold-out Brooklyn Paramount show. Midway through his Friday-night DJ set for his Britpop 25 tour, the producer and moptopped dungeon master of the hyperpop universe has put on his Von Dutch remix, a standout single from last summer’s Brat invasion that brings pop princesses Charli xcx and Addison Rae together for some prima donna repartee atop a distorted, industrial production. When the bridge’s thumping hydraulic bass drops and opens up its warped wormhole of sound, the packed room suddenly fills with skilled (too skilled) impressions of Rae’s piercing six-second shriek. Cook, who has been bopping behind the DJ booth up until now, collapses to his knees at the center of the stage, bowled over by the sheer energy in the room. Such are the demands of Cook’s delirious brand of pop: like a black hole, it must suck you into its vortex. Cook emerged on the scene in 2013 with his London-based experimental pop music label PC Music, and his supersized exaggerations of mainstream pop cliches – think Auto-Tuned voices pitch-shifted to a pip-squeak chipmunk register, cartoon boing-splat-zap sound effects on steroids, and glossy, hyper-artificial production – invited intensely polarized responses. Depending on whom you asked at the time, PC Music was either the piss-take creation of a deeply unsatisfied art school student with some personal, unresolved vendetta against pop music, or an explosive collective of rabble-rousers redefining electronic music and bringing a much-needed dash of girly playfulness to the UK’s mostly macho house revival scene. Yet, love it or hate it, Cook’s brand of pop maximalism ultimately proved here to stay: by the end of the label’s decade-long run, Cook was working with megastars such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, and artists of the extended PC Music-verse – including frequent Cook collaborator Charli xcx and the late Sophie – were rightful stars of their own. Continue reading...