Max Richter: Innovative composer on the glories of rave, and the perils of populism 

The gorgeous Voices 2 has the avant-garde composer creating an instrumental protest album that he links to a tradition involving such figures such as Bob Dylan and Beethoven

Max Richter has just released Voices 2. Picture: Mike Terry

Max Richter was never much of a raver. But the avant-garde composer’s early career coincided with the explosion in the late 1980s of the underground techno scene, at the time variously heralded as the future of music and harbinger of civilisation’s downfall. And he draws a connection between the soundsystem bangers that so terrified the establishment and his new record, Voices 2, the second of two albums inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“Rave had the honour being legislated against. Remember the notorious ‘repetitive beats’?” says Richter (55), whose music Crack magazine described as existing “within a kind of Venn diagram space between alternative popular music and the avant-garde”.