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.
One day, the teenage Ben bought a Commodore Amiga 500 home computer. Armed with this and a £1 piece of music software, he began to explore the world of electronic composition. Eventually he got so good at using this cheap set-up that Warp Records released his first single Children At Play; an energetic, if lengthy, instrumental romp created with these lo-fi means and sent to the label as a demo tape. "Warp were the only label who were interested in my first tune", says Ben. "I sent my demo tape to fifty labels in all, but most people freaked out. A couple of guys made the bizarre criticism that I had too many ideas." This criticism has frequently dogged Max Tundra (as he was hereby renamed), in a musically diverse, eclectic career where time signatures, musical genres and instrumentation have been given the thorough shake-up they have long needed.
A debut album Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be, and three subsequent singles for Domino Recordings have given the world a set of dense, multi-textured, emotionally-charged tunes, each of which has a different story to tell. "My working methods for each composition tend to vary every time. Often my music contains no electronics at all, and I greatly enjoy learning as many musical instruments as possible, so as to make my records stand out from those made by totally computer-based musicians." As well as his trusty Amiga (which he still does all his sequencing on today, having vowed never to use a laptop to make music), Max Tundra's records have variously featured himself playing drums, trumpet, banjo, cello, piano, guitars, violin, recorders, synthesizers, melodica, Fender Rhodes, xylophone, bass guitar, oven door, egg-slicer and even a recording of an ancient clock in the British Museum in London.
Max Tundra's second album, Mastered by Guy at The Exchange, is his most recent long-player. However, the phrase long-player is something of a misnomer; once again, the album clocks in at less than 45 minutes. Max explains: "In the old days, you would rarely get an album which was longer than three quarters of an hour. This was due to the limitations of the single vinyl LP. Now that CDs have been invented, musicians all over the world feel obliged to bombard their public with 74 minutes of music at a time. This frequently leads to albums cluttered up with boring stuff, leaving people reaching for the skip-button of their CD players. I try and spend as long as possible ensuring that every track on a Max Tundra record is totally necessary. Most of the classic albums in history are single pieces of vinyl."
Anyone who heard Max's instrumental debut album will be pleasantly surprised to learn of the appearance of vocals this time round. In fact, every track on Mastered by Guy at The Exchange contains singing (except for 61over which contains a conversation). The singing voices are provided by Ben himself and his sister Becky. "She's been blessed with a beautiful voice. I use hers whenever the pitch of the song is slightly too high for me." The mixture of instrumentation, styles and textures is as vivid as ever, with a few more reference points to existing forms of music than before. Brassy opener Merman isnt a million miles away from the sassy swingtime big bands of the 1950s. Lysine, the first single to be taken from the new album, and Max's poppiest number to date, recalls the detailed programming of R&B producers The Neptunes, whilst album track Hilted owes more to 80s English pop-psychers XTC. The final track Labial gives this LP its grand, epic closure. These warm, emotive, uplifting songs will capture your spirit, pour it over ice, and serve it back to you at the best disco in town (where you wont get turned away for liking both Destiny's Child and Frank Zappa). Incidentally, theres no dress code either.
He recently recorded one of the last ever Peel Sessions with a special eight-piece band. Max explains: "I decided it would be fun to see if I could come up with some full live arrangements of my songs. So my sister and I, and six of our musically talented friends, learnt to perform four of my existing compositions on a variety of instruments. The resulting arrangements are exciting, organic versions of the originals. The track Lysine for example has complex drum programming on the original; my friend Paul learnt to play every single drum hit on a real kit. A sequenced melody line on the album version was played on a Yamaha QY20; the Peel Session version includes a hammered dulcimer replica of this part. And so on. We used twenty musical instruments in all on the day of the session, including the BBC's own Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ and Steinway grand piano. What fun!"
For the last few years, Max Tundra has been working on his third album for Domino. The work continues to this day, with a possible release date of spring 2008. As well as this he is busy with various side-projects and remixes, and continues to play concerts in a wide variety of venues around the world.
maxtundra.com - official website
Ink Me - video of single from Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be
Lysine - video of single from Mastered by Guy at The Exchange
Merman - video of track from Mastered by Guy at The Exchange
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