A.G. Cook Is Charli xcx’s Secret Weapon—and Was Vital to ‘The Moment’

It was the first day on set to shoot The Moment, Charli xcx’s autofiction mockumentary about the Brat album rollout and tour that stars the musician as a “hell version” of herself. Charli, director Aidan Zamiri, a full crew, and dozens of extras were filming a nightclub scene in London; through a stroke of scheduling luck, Charli’s longtime musical collaborator, record producer and DJ A.G. Cook, was also on set that first day, filming a cameo. “I don’t know why they ended up planning it like that,” Cook says. “But it was nice being there on day one, when the whole cast was still excited and sheepish.”

When Cook arrived to set in the afternoon, however, he quickly identified a problem: The many extras on the dance floor had been dancing for hours to a click track, a ticking audio cue that provides a beat without any music and is often used in filming. While it’s helpful when a film is in postproduction, a click track doesn’t inspire movement in the same way that real music does—especially after many hours of filming. “I was really insistent,” Cook says. “I was like, ‘Look, tell me the BPM that you’re filming to. I will genuinely do a real set.’”

So Cook quickly whipped up an actual sound mix. “It was the middle of the afternoon, and it actually felt really euphoric…It was such a hyped, sweaty, insane crowd.”

Cook wasn’t just The Moment’s onscreen DJ and shoot hypeman. The 35-year-old Brit, who goes by Alex in real life, was the film’s composer as well, and he’s a Grammy-winning producer who has worked on tracks by everyone from Beyoncé to Jungkook. His friendship with Charli runs deep; when Charli says “I wanna dance to A.G.” in “Club Classics,” she’s talking about him.

The two first connected in the mid-2010s through their fellow collaborator Sophie, connecting online and praising each other’s work. But they didn’t officially meet until Cook attended a housewarming party after Charli officially moved to Los Angeles. At the time, Cook was purposely keeping his online presence minimal and producing music through his PC Music label under multiple aliases, including DJ Warlord and Pobbles. “I think she had this feeling that I’d be this intimidating, kind of Machiavellian figure,” he says, admitting he had his own assumptions about her as a pop star.

Their connection was instant. Not only do they share a musical vocabulary, but they’re also both only children, and each completed one year of art school before dropping out. Perhaps more importantly for their friendship, at that moment, Charli was sitting at an inflection point. Following the success of “Boom Clap” and “Fancy” in 2014, Atlantic Records, her label, wanted her to continue making mainstream pop music. The label didn’t love her hyperpop single “Vroom Vroom,” which it felt was disconnected from the rest of her discography.

“She was having a really tough time with her label,” Cook says. “So I was someone who, I think, verbalized it in a similar way to her. I got brought in as emergency backup. I was sort of a creative director for about a year. It was just…‘Atlantic doesn’t understand how this all relates. Can you come in with some creative documents and ideas?’”