British music producer (born 1990)
Alexander Guy Cook (born 23 August 1990) is an English music producer and the head of the now-closed UK record label PC Music. Best known as executive producer for Charli XCX, he has also collaborated with PC Music artists such as Hannah Diamond, GFOTY, Finn Keane (as Thy Slaughter), Danny L Harle and Felicita, and has multiple aliases under which he releases music including Life Sim and DJ Warlord.
Since founding PC Music in August 2013, Cook's label represented over 20 artists releasing music within a similar style, in which tropes from mainstream 1990s and 2000s pop music are amplified. This style of exaggerated pop tropes grew to serve as the foundation of the hyperpop genre, which Cook is credited for developing and popularising.
Cook formed the one-off project QT with musician Sophie and performance artist Hayden Dunham, producing the 2014 single "Hey QT". He released his first solo singles in 2014, and was named #12 in the "Dazed" 100 for "redefining style and youth culture in 2015 and beyond". He served as executive producer on Charli XCX's mixtapes "Number 1 Angel" and "Pop 2" (both 2017), and albums "Charli" (2019) and "how i'm feeling now" (2020).
Cook released his two debut albums, "7G" and "Apple", and received the "Variety" Hitmakers Innovator of The Year Award in 2020. In 2022, he co-produced the song "All Up in Your Mind" from Beyoncé's album "Renaissance", which earned him a nomination for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and he released his third main album "Britpop" in 2024. He continued to produce for Charli XCX with "Brat" (2024) and its remix album, earning him a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording for his "Von Dutch" remix.
Early life.
Alexander Guy Cook is the son of English architect Sir Peter Cook and Israeli architect Yael Reisner.
He attended Goldsmiths, University of London, where he studied music. It was at Goldsmiths he reconnected with Danny L Harle, with whom he had gone to school as a teen. The two bonded over their shared musical tastes for artists including Captain Beefheart and Archie Shepp, as well as interest in comedy duo Tim &amp; Eric. This grew into a musical project called Dux Content.
Career.
2011–2013: Career beginnings.
Since they did not have a vocalist, Dux Content focused on musical experiments like compound metres and changes in tempo. One of their earlier works was a collection of compositions for the Disklavier, released with Spencer Noble and Tim Phillips under the name "Dux Consort". The pair released their songs with renderings of digital avatars for promotional artwork.
Cook created Gamsonite, a "pseudo-label" collecting his early collaborations. Dux Content released its songs with renderings of digital avatars for promotional artwork. They contributed to the score for Alicia Norman's animated film "Heart of Death" and began considering a children's television show titled "Dux Content's Jungle Jam". Cook and Harle explored how to build rhythms out of a vocalist's natural singing tempo and released the results as "Dux Kidz". The project was noticed by producer Sophie, who later worked with PC Music's acts. Cook began working on building flashy websites with Hannah Diamond and decided to focus on using websites to promote music.
2013–2016: Foundation of PC Music.
In August 2013, Cook founded PC Music as a way of embracing an A&amp;R role, with the aim of "recording people who don't normally make music and treating them as if they're a major label artist." In January 2014, Cook released "Keri Baby" as his first solo single, with vocals by Diamond. The track uses pop clichés and glitchy vocals to depict Diamond as a digital entity on a screen. His follow-up single "Beautiful" was released in June. "Beautiful" is a pastiche of Eurodance, featuring high, pitch-shifted vocals and donk sounds. "Fact" magazine called it PC Music's "de-facto anthem", and the song received a remix from Scottish producer Rustie.
Cook worked with Sophie to produce a song for QT, a pop singer portrayed by American performance artist Hayden Dunham. She found Cook through his work online and wanted to use a song to market a QT energy drink. Their resulting collaboration "Hey QT" was released in August 2014 on XL Recordings.
On 22 December 2014, A. G. Cook released "What I Mean" from his "Personal Computer Music" mix as a single. The single was made available as a free download via radio presenter Annie Mac's "Free Music Monday" SoundCloud channel. Opening with muffled dialogue, the song incorporates robotic vocals and a sample of R&amp;B artist Chuckii Booker. Its organ-based arrangement was a more soulful take on Cook's usual style of dance-pop. After discussing a collaboration on a Charli XCX album, Cook contributed an official remix of her single "Doing It" featuring Rita Ora.
Cook's work received recognition on year-end lists for 2014. "Keri Baby" was listed at number 5 of "Dummy" magazine's "20 Best Tracks of 2014", and BuzzFeed's "13 Obscure Tracks of 2014", number 1 on Gorilla vs. Bear's, "Favourite Tracks of 2014", number 2 on "Dazed &amp; Confused"'s "Top 20 Tracks of 2014". "Pitchfork" ranked "Beautiful" number 30 on its list of "The 100 Best Tracks of 2014".
March 2015 saw Cook's PC Music head to the US to showcase all 11 of his label's talent at the Empire Garage in Austin, Texas as part of SXSW. The showcase received positive reviews, with "The Guardian" stating that his "entire thundering set [shows] this is a label refusing to be confined by definitions of genre or good taste." On 8 May 2015, Cook performed as part of a PC Music show at BRIC House in Brooklyn, New York as part of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival. The show was billed as the premiere of Pop Cube, "a multimedia reality network".
In January 2016, Chinese singer Li Yuchun, also known as Chris Lee, released a single consisting of songs "Real Love" and "Only You", both of which were produced by Cook. That April, experimental music producer Oneohtrix Point Never posted a cryptic video to his Instagram that appeared to show Cook working on a remix of "Sticky Drama", a single from his 2015 album "Garden of Delete". The remix was later surprise-released on 16 December. Also in April, Cook made a cameo in Charli XCX's music video for "Vroom Vroom". "Superstar", Cook's fifth single, was released via PC Music on 13 July. On the day of its release, Cook revealed via Twitter that "Superstar" had been in the works for over two years prior, originally beginning as a "topline pitch" for electro house DJ Zedd.
2017–2020: Charli XCX, Jónsi, "7G" and "Apple".
In March 2017, Charli XCX's mixtape "Number 1 Angel" was released, prominently featuring production by Cook and others, including PC Music artists and affiliates Sophie, Danny L Harle, Life Sim and Finn Keane, who created the project EasyFX with Cook. This was followed by the mixtape "Pop 2", also featuring production by Cook and others. Pitchfork Media gave "Pop 2" a rating of 8.4 out of 10, calling it "a vision of what pop music could be" and "the best full-length work of both Charli and PC Music's respective careers". In July he covered Aphex Twin’s 1999 single "Windowlicker" for his set at Field Day which directly clashed with Aphex Twin's headline show at the festival, spending an "intense 48 hours inside a windowless room" to do so.
Cook released a remix of Phoenix's song "Fior Di Latte" in February 2018. In May, he released a 57-minute mix titled "Hollywood Ambient", remixing tracks by artists including Rihanna, Sigur Rós, Charli XCX, and Katy Perry, for Sigur Rós' “Liminal” ambient playlist. It also remixed Grimes' song "Flesh Without Blood"; Cook called it "Flesh Without Musk" in reference to her then partner Elon Musk. Cook produced the Charli XCX single track "Focus" with Jack &amp; Coke in June. In November, he contributed to Tommy Cash's second studio album "¥€$". He is credited as the producer on 5 tracks on the record, including lead single "X-RAY" which he co-produced with Danny L Harle.
Cook was announced as the co-executive producer for Charli XCX's third studio album "Charli", which was released on 13 September 2019. Cook produced six of the album's seven singles, including "Gone", the third single from the album, which features Christine and the Queens. The song was awarded "Best New Track" by "Pitchfork" and best song of the week by "Stereogum". In October, 100 gecs released Cook's remix of their single "Money Machine" to announce their remix album "1000 gecs and the Tree of Clues". "The Fader" called the remix "a disorienting exercise in maximalism and rapid tonal shifts."
On 6 April 2020, Cook and BJ Burton were announced as co-executive producers for Charli XCX's quarantine album "how i'm feeling now", which was written in an open-source style, sharing the production process online and utilizing fan input and content. Cook also produced Jónsi's first solo music in a decade, the song "Exhale", released on 23 April, and followed this by serving as executive producer on Jónsi's album "Shiver", released on 2 October.
On 30 July 2020, Cook announced an upcoming studio album "7G", and held a virtual concert over Zoom featuring Caroline Polachek, GRRL and Thy Slaughter titled "7 by 7" on 7 August. Thy Slaughter is a collaboration project between Cook and labelmate Finn Keane. "7G" was released through PC Music on 12 August, comprising 49 tracks split over seven discs.
On 20 August 2020, Cook released the single "Oh Yeah" and announced another studio album, "Apple." Leading up to its release, Cook hosted another free livestream festival across Zoom, Bandcamp and Twitch entitled 'Appleville', featuring performers including 100 gecs, Alaska Reid, Charli XCX, Clairo, Dorian Electra, Hannah Diamond, Kero Kero Bonito, Namasenda and Oklou. All proceeds from VIP ticket sales were donated to Mermaids and Black Cultural Archives. The album was released through PC Music on 18 September 2020.
After 5 years of collaborating with Charli XCX, in November 2020 the pair was awarded the Variety Hitmakers Innovator of The Year Award. In December 2020, Cook took part in LuckyMe Records' 12 Alternative Futures Advent Calendar Project. Cook's remix of Baauer's song "Planet's Mad" was released on 10 December.
2021–2022: Hikaru Utada, "Apple vs. 7G", Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.
Cook collaborated with Japanese American singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada in March 2021, co-producing the song "One Last Kiss", the theme song for the Japanese animated science fiction film "". On 9 March, he released a cover of The Smashing Pumpkins' song "Today", announcing his SoundCloud-exclusive album "Dream Logic", featuring reworks of "7G" and "Apple" tracks as well as collaborations with and remixes of Charli XCX, Oneohtrix Point Never, The 1975, Jónsi, No Rome, Oklou, Alex Somers, and Alaska Reid. This was released on 12 March. In April, Cook penned a tribute to Sophie who had died earlier that year.
Cook later announced that further remixes from his would be included on a 21-track joint remix album titled "Apple vs. 7G." The album was released on 28 May and features remixes from Keane and Hannah Diamond as well as Polachek, Charli XCX and No Rome. Cook released the remixed version of No Rome's "Spinning", featuring Charli XCX and the 1975, in May 2021. In June, Cook hosted and curated his first show in a 4 part residency on BBC Radio 6 music as part of the 'Lose Yourself with...' series. He contributed to Lady Gaga's "Dawn of Chromatica" remix album, released in September 2021, providing a remix for the track "911" alongside Charli XCX. That October, Cook partnered with Apple Inc. to release "Start Up", a song that incorporates sounds from Apple products from the past 45 years. It was used as the intro music for an Apple media event that month.
Cook co-produced another song with Utada in 2022, called "Kimi ni Muchū", and remixed Utada's song "Face My Fears" for her album "Bad Mode". In 2022, he co-wrote and co-produced the song "All Up in Your Mind" with Beyoncé, which was included on her seventh studio album "Renaissance". It earned his first Grammy Award nomination for Album of the Year.
2023–present: Closure of PC Music, Thy Slaughter, "Britpop" and "Brat".
Cook lent additional production to "Lick the light out", featuring Madonna, on Christine and the Queens' "Paranoïa, Angels, True Love". Cook also produced the majority of Alaska Reid's album "Disenchanter", which released in July 2023. He worked again with Utada,