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Max Tundra- Mastered By Guy at the Exchange (2004)
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
Joni Mitchell- The Hissing of Summer Lawns (2003)
Post-Court and Spark Joni Mitchell isn’t easy. While some say she peaked with the emotionally gut wrenching Blue, others say that the former album was her commercial and artistic apex. While both albums hold in them some of Mitchell’s most personal lyrics (especially the fragile songs on Blue, which chronicle her divorce, decision to put her daughter up for adoption and her affair with Graham Nash), only the exiled, The Hissing of Summer Lawns points toward all of Mitchell’s immense talent.
Later in her career Mitchell has had a minor resurgence with her back catalogue, specifically the anti-commercial “Big Yellow Taxi”, which has been covered and sampled, perhaps best by Q-Tip for the pop/rap “Got ‘Til It’s Gone” by Janet Jackson in 1997. Curiously, 22 years earlier Mitchell made a compelling case for herself as rap artist of the year- male or female- with the music and lyrics she presented on Hissing. On “The Jungle Line”, which effectively “samples” the warrior drummers of Burundi, Joni talks of addiction while juxtaposing New York’s underbelly with thick jungle and drug imagery.
The short view of “Edith and the Kingpin” is one of a young girl being taken in to the prostitution trade by an old-school pimp. “Harry’s House- Centerpiece” gets the mash-up treatment by taking the romantic Mandel/Hendricks‘ standard about a couple’s simple love and suffocates it in the tale of an empty house wife unhappy in her marriage but unable to forgo its material trappings. Mitchell’s words throughout are acidic and sad. The music dense and incredibly spare, mixing folk, avant-garde, world and jazz into a new vocabulary.
With screenplay-like detail and oftentimes disturbing views of American life in the 1970’s Joni Mitchell effectively gets a head start on Nas, Tupac and Biggie without even so much as a mic check.
Originally published in Sound Collector Audio Review #5
Anthony Shadduck Quartet @ Finger Prints (03.19.07)
In the last ten years I’ve either played at or attended thousands of shows. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy about a performance in which I didn’t actually perform. In that same decade I’ve been shopping at Fingerprints in Long Beach: I bought my first Squarepusher and Steve Reich records there and with the Anthony Shadduck Quartet show last night, I set up their first free jazz in-store.
The free performance brought out almost 70 people and they were witness to some vintage explorations. Old friends Nels Cline and Lynn Johnston were in fine form and the rhythm section of Bert Karl and the aforementioned Anthony Shadduck kept the churn.
The quartet was in consistent peril and the tension was palpable. I was smiling and on the balls of my feet for the entire fifty-minute, three movement improvisation. From clicking be-bop shuffle to stately melodic overtures to upright bass/electric guitar triplet pantomimes, Messrs. Shadduck and Co. rarely rested. The audience, no doubt there to see first hand the mythic fingers of Nels Cline, were witness to that rarest of assemblies: one soaked in honesty. Although the stray cliché slipped into the proceedings the bulk of the performance was a white-knuckle affair.
Lynn Johnston, performing on alto, bass and standard clarinet, bellowed, swooped and curled his notes around the strings of Shadduck‘s bass. Cline wrung metallic swirls of sound out of his guitar. He alternated between clusters of notes and thin ribbons of sound looped, reversed and de-tuned. Drummer Karl conjured hi-hat ticks and tom-taps with an economy of movement. He played at times against and along the current of the evening, occasionally providing a flurry of rhythm followed by spare bass drum kicks. The ensemble’s organizing namesake, Anthony Shadduck however, rose to occasion and pulled together all disparate elements creating a conversation that no doubt would be better understood upon repeated listens. His bass lines crackled and crept: from breakneck to Brokeback.
After two extended improvisations Bert Karl tore sharply into a drum solo. Cline, Shadduck and Johnston quickly followed suit and were in and out with vague unison lines rescued from the dust by muscle memory. Restless, the group exchanged ideas and quickly organized itself. Cline scraped. Shadduck stabbed. As the mangled end came near a collective exhale and applause refused to let night fall into silence.
Originally published in L.A. Record