The analog to most contemporary music can be found in the music of the not-so-distant past. If looked for with enough vigor it’s not hard to hear Selling England By The Pound-era Genesis in Blonde Redhead’s Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons or Jaco Pastorious’ liquid bass articulation in Tom Jenkinson’s writing throughout Hard Normal Daddy. That having been said, a much more difficult task is pulling apart the influences and residues that construct the music found on Max Tundra’s Mastered by Guy at The Exchange. Along with Sufjan Steven’s Michigan and the Reverend Charlie Jackson’s God’s Got It, MBGATE was stolen from a friend’s truck, surely in an attempt to boost said thief’s record collection. Such are the disparate sounds that bounce and bubble up out of Ben Jacobs’ music. Composed in the now archaic manner of using live instrumentation without the use of massive computer programs, Jacobs’ songs pop out at the listener with as much colour as invention and warmth.
With the odd album opener “Merman” fake keyboard horns and chord vamps dance without inhibition. Jacobs’ voice peeps in happily over the video game din in a whisper-sing delivery, not unlike multi-instrumentalist-savant Stevens. However halfway through the two minute piece cascading live piano mingles with the tinny, low-bit cymbals. Herein lies the context for Max Tundra’s music: sincere juxtaposition. The succeeding track “MBGATE”, itself an acronym for the album title- but fitting in uniformly with all of the album’s other six-letter titles, begins with the sound of some homogenous indie rock band tuning up. Only moments later the sloppy bass mush and spiky electric guitar turn into Daft Punk-inspired glitch-infection. The faux wheeze with which the vocals are given in the beginning of the song now reappear- themselves unaltered- their entire sonic bed changed around them.
Initially, Max Tundra music was entirely instrumental, the two track, 24-minute, Children At Play was released by Warp in 1999 and featured much more rabid drum n’bass production. If listened to with a critical ear one can hear the shape of sounds to come. Wisely the music one Mastered opts for an entirely new challenge with Jacobs acknowledging that the writing of lyrics was, perhaps, more difficult than the writing of the music. Interestingly it is the playfulness of the vocals, also provided with much cheek by sister Becky, that helps to carry the album on to repeated listens. Certainly the interaction of the skittering melodies and thick analog bass of “Lysine”(one of the few tracks with clear artistic influence- Prince!) with Becky’s sincere vocalization of:
I isolate amino acids sometimes
I bottle them and sell them when the sun shines
Cold sores erupt if you don’t keep lysine levels healthy
And later in the same track name dropping Wire writer David Toop:
An obituary by Mr. Toop
Now he’s gone there’s one less laptop-loop
Perhaps because of his recent conversion to lyricism Jacobs seems to approach his words and music with equal amounts of playfulness. The second to last track on the album named after its subject, Michel “Gondry”, is pure supplication. Singing directly to the inventive music video director over a spare electro-stomp, Jacobs coyly asks for his own “Around the World”. Not surprisingly Gondry wrote back and included an outrageous price list (“special effect (my specialty)…$1.00 (on sale)”) for the prospective video, which he jokingly suggested should be his namesake track.
Ben Jacobs is Max Tundra. All the instruments here are his: banjo, strings, electric bass and guitar, drums, keyboards and pianos (in abundance), trumpet and so on. His mastery of the Amiga 500 is evident in the fact that all of the album’s sequencing was done on a 20 year-old computer with a £1 software program. Not content to ride any groove out for fear of repeating it more than once; most tracks end before they seems to begin. On the two-minute “Fuerte” the Spanish lyrics about butterflies are followed with a keyboard solo and chord progression that is best described as a Rick Wakeman remix of the Super Mario Bros. them. Shorter still, “Pocket” combines overdubbed string unison lines, reverb soaked vocals and acoustic guitar Banda rhythms. Somehow these seemingly ridiculous real-time mash-ups come off with scorching enthusiasm: the surefooted beats on “Cabasa” give way after five minutes to a transformation akin to hearing a DJ cross-fading from Squarepusher to Ben Folds Five.
The music is surprisingly self-referential. At two separate times Jacobs discusses the actual song which you are listening to. On “Hilted”, which reverses the live to electronic concept of “MBGATE”, he foreshadows the piano that is to follow his lyric and in the quick jumble of words that comprise “Lights” he discusses that a time-stretch function, used on the vocals presumably, has been just been completed. This makes the process of the music’s construction all the more confusing, prompting “chicken or the egg”-type mystery. With “Lights” Mastered By Guy at The Exchange is at its best. With humor and sheer catchiness the rapid, hyper-melodic vocals deliver anecdotes about the aforementioned Amiga 500, working on his own music (Children At Play) and the infamous LTJ Bukem rejection letter sent in response to an early Max Tundra demo. All wrapped in a Craig David R&B parody and, of course, clocking in at under one minute forty seconds.
Originally published in Sound Collector Audio Review #6
