JOURNALISM BY MAX
I moved to New York in 2011 to start an online magazine with my friends: Cluster Mag. I then worked as managing editor at Vice and as staff writer at the music site Resident Advisor, where I was New York correspondent from 2014 to 2019. In 2020, I left to pursue a master’s degree at the Columbia Journalism School and, after graduating, worked as a full-time freelance journalist until 2022. These days — on nights and weekends, mostly — I continue to write and report feature-length stories about music, art and literature.
LITERATURE
2026: When was the last time you laughed at work? [Separator]
2026: In “Bomarzo,” the Renaissance man is a monster [The Nation]
2025: Real narcos have Harvard degrees — the lost interview with Fernanda Melchor [Separator]
2025: “A disaster novel that ends with a whimper” — on “The Dance and the Fire” by Daniel Saldaña París [Separator]
2025: “A danger to myself and others” — on Samanta Schweblin’s “Good and Evil and Other Stories” [Separator]
2025: “My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden." Interview with Bulgarian translator Angela Rodel [Separator]
2025: The distant land I’m supposed to love — on Avi Shlaim’s “Memoirs of an Arab-Jew” [Separator]
2025: That Pulitzer finalist nobody knew — on Stacey Levine’s “Mice 1961” [Separator]
2025: A lost gem of outlaw literature, found in the Sonoran Desert [Separator]
2025: “I’m into role-playing” — on the seminal cult photo book “Evidence” [Separator]
2025: Revenge of the giant humanoid mosquito — review of Michel Nieva’s “Dengue Boy” [The Guardian]
2024: Privileges of misery: on Chilean cult masterpiece “The Obscene Bird of Night” [The Baffler]
2022: Fernanda Melchor on her new novel, “Paradais” [New York]
2022: Fernanda Melchor habla sobre su nueva novela, Paradais [New York]
2021: Simon Hanselmann’s unhinged Instagram comic captures the horrors of 2020 [Input]
2021: Lord of the flies: a literary biography of Mexican sci-fi pioneer Rafael Bernal [The Baffler]
2016: In “Uproot," Jace Clayton takes a worldwide tour of the digital underground [LA Times]
ART & LIFE
features:
2025: A painter of landscapes: nationalism and the sublime in the work of José María Velasco [The Baffler]
2025: A love letter to the New York City pool scene [Hell Gate]
2024: Bárbara Sánchez-Kane: the shapeshifter [Hypebeast Magazine]
2023: Everybody loves the new La Guardia Airport. What about the art? [New York Magazine]
2023: The curious case of the Transcendental Painting Group [The Nation]
2023: Will a retrospective revive interest in Darrel Ellis's experimental images? [Aperture]
2022: The photographer redefining male beauty in Mexico [Aperture]
2022: Is NFT art any good? [The Verge]
2022: What happened to Ana Mendieta [New York Magazine]
2022: ASMA Plays with the iconography of fantasy and fairy tales [Art in America]
2022: For Edison Peñafiel, migration is an infinite loop [The Miami Herald]
2021: Gala Porras-Kim and the afterlife of an artifact [New York Magazine]
2021: Art at the border of power and ecology [The Nation]
2021: Luchita Hurtado's spiritual modernism [The Nation]
2021: Cameras for class struggle: on the Workers Film and Photo League [Art in America]
Reviews:
2022: Florine Stettheimer, insider artist [The Nation]
2022: Slab City, California: the artistic outpost where outsiders find home [Document]
2021: The artist as muckraker [Momus]
2021: The terrifying cynicism of Teeter-Totter Wall [AiA]
2021: Capsule review: “Untitled" by photographer Sasha Phyars-Burgess [NYT]
2020: John Cage, man of music — and mushrooms [AiA]
2020: Aki Onda's new record uses radio to channel the ghost of Nam June Paik [AiA]
2020: The documentary that Mexico City's sonidero scene deserves [BOMB]
2020: A new film corrects the record on sound-art pioneer Delia Debyshire [BOMB]
2020: A survey of five decades of protest art at the Interference Archive [AiA]
2020: Jorge Garcia plays a recluse with a secret glam side in Nobody Knows I'm Here [Remezcla]
MUSIC
Reports and essays:
2023: Estado de reggaetón with Rosa Pistola [Script Consultant for Resident Advisor film]
2021: Why did house dancing leave the club? [Script Writer for Resident Advisor film]
2019: Inside Colombia's world-class techno scene [RA]
2019: Colombia tiene una escena de techno de clase mundial [RA]
2018: Sonideros: the mobile soundsystems of Mexico City [RA]
2017: Dimitri Hegemann dreams of Detroit [RA]
2017: The Thing: it came from the basement [RA]
2016: Real estate, gentrification and nightlife in New York [RA]
2015: Hardpop: dancing through the drug war [NPR's Latino USA]
2015: “Everything new is exciting”: profile of Mexican club label NAAFI [RA]
2014: I woke up like this: health raves and the productivity regime [The New Inquiry]
2014: RIP Body Actualized, Bushwick's new age hot mess [The Fader]
2014: Dispatch from the Paradise Garage reunion [Vice]
2013: Repetitive beats prohibited: a brief history of the war on dancing [Cluster Mag]
ARTIST Profiles:
Regal86, Kelman Duran, Yaeji, Shawn O'Sullivan, Venus X, DJ Wey, Phil Moffa, Motion Graphics, Dengue Dengue Dengue, KUNQ, Via App, NAAFI, The Meridian Brothers, The Bug
Album reviews:
The secret history of Mexican synth music [RA]
Rewind review: Gold Teeth Thief by DJ Rupture [RA]
RA Recommends: DJ E by Chuquimamani-Condori [RA]
RA Recommends: Spa 700 by 700 Bliss [RA]
RA Recommends: And Yet It's All Love by Fatima [RA]
RA Recommends: Colón Man by Equiknoxx [RA]
Machine by The Bug [RA]
Eternal Children by Equiknoxx [RA]
Siete Raíces by Dengue Dengue Dengue [RA]
Wonderland by Demdike Stare [RA]
Grupo Jejeje by Grupo Jejeje [RA]
Disappearer by Ron Morelli [RA]
Demon City by Elysia Crampton [RA]
Fool by Jameszoo [RA]
Music for Documentaries by Lawrence Le Doux [RA]
Elysia Crampton by Elysia Crampton [RA]
The Electro Maloya Experiments by Jako Maron [RA]
I'll Tell You What by RP Boo [RA]
Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints by RP Boo [RA]
K.O. by Miss Red [RA]
Les Riddims du Lieu-Dit by Low Jack [RA]
Taz and May Vids by Micachu [RA]
interviews:
Chancha Vía Circuito and the story of electronic cumbia [RA]
Kerri Chandler on The Hour podcast [RA]
DJ Rupture on the RA Exchange [RA]
Frankie Decaiza Hutchison of Dweller Festival on the RA Exchange [RA]
Live at Nowadays with Gladys Pizarro, Lenny Dee and Kevin Aviance [RA]
Jubilee on the RA Exchange [RA]
Dennis Ferrer on the RA Exchange [RA]
The Bunker's Bryan Kasenic on the RA Exchange [RA]
Falty DL on the RA Exchange [RA]
Verraco for the RA Mix Podcast [RA]