Max Tundra
Ben Jacobs was lucky enough to grow up in a house with a piano. As a child he protested about the lessons in which he was forced to learn the music of the famous (dead) composers. “I used to prefer sitting at the keyboard at home and playing tv theme songs and music from adverts,” remembers Ben. Eventually he realised that this expanse of black and white keys could be turned to his own advantage and he began forming his own musical inventions.
Parallax Error Beheads You, the third ...
Ben Jacobs was lucky enough to grow up in a house with a piano. As a child he protested about the lessons in which he was forced to learn the music of the famous (dead) composers. “I used to prefer sitting at the keyboard at home and playing tv theme songs and music from adverts,” remembers Ben. Eventually he realised that this expanse of black and white keys could be turned to his own advantage and he began forming his own musical inventions.
Parallax Error Beheads You, the third Max Tundra LP and his first since 2002’s Mastered By Guy At The Exchange, is a masterpiece of micro-melodies and sound-bytes; a triumph of splicing, dicing and editing. It’s an intricate mosaic of sounds and styles, some of which you might recognise from the last 30 years of pop, rock, prog, disco, funk, techno, rap, metal and soul, but many of which are completely new: either from a startling recombination of existing genres, or from Max inventing an original one himself. The attention to detail, and the sheer speed at which ideas whizz past you in the mix, will leave you stunned.
“There are micro-melodies on the album – generally, layers and layers of stuff,” says Max. “Hopefully, the more you listen to it, the more new stuff will reveal itself, stuff you didn’t notice the first few times you played it. It’s intricate but that should mean it’s more rewarding over the distance, so that people can go back to it and hear new things each time.”
Mentioning that “Which Song” – earmarked as the second single from the album, following “Will Get Fooled Again” (which itself sounds like McFly in space) – sounds like Scritti Politti had they signed to Warp in 1991, Max admits, “I like the Scritti comparisons.”
As for the aaahs and ooohs – the luscious, smooth vocals – Max says he arrived at those from years of “doing Prince at karaoke.” But how many people did it take to put together the multi-faceted extravaganza that is Parallax Error Beheads You? Three? Five? Nine? All of the above? No – one: Ben Jacobs a.k.a. Max Tundra, who handles all the many instruments, the vocals and the production. This might be why the album took six years to create.