A blissfully weird recommendation today, calculated on the premise that Wednesday's are a drag, and we should all be setting our sights higher than work, dinner, sleep, etc. Max Tundra is, according to his myspace, playing at Hector's House this evening, and he's a fascinating, unconventional proposition, and surely worth seeing, if only for his uniqueness.
Tundra, whose real name is the totally inappropriate Ben Jacobs, has worked with bands from Franz Ferdinand to Kid 606, right through to the marvellous Pet Shop Boys, and recently toured with Hot Chip. But he is best known as the creator of his own odd, fractured electronic pop, which is simultaneously bonkers and brimming with mischief.
Bored of Brighton was introduced to him via his insane 2008 set ‘Parallax Error Beheads You’, which was a cacophony of intricate synth pop, electronic beeps, double-speed bursts of melody and autotuned vocals that seemed to reference everything from '70s TV music to the sound of computers in the 1980s; from XTC's unpredictable art-rock to the heavily ironic synthesised sound of Momus; the pure tones of Scritti Politti to the insanity of Squarepusher.
But this is tuneful music, too - bewildering cacophonies regularly transform suddenly into something reminiscent of the note-perfect, deeply unfashionable jazz-rock of Steely Dan – but just weird, weird, weird. It would perhaps be fair to point out that almost everyone Bored in Brighton has played Max Tundra to has hated it on first listen, but several have since fallen for him completely.
If you have spotify, click here and try to get through all eleven minutes of his exquisite 'Until We Die' without losing your mind - it contains some of the most lovely melodies ever, somewhere in the middle.
Otherwise, here he is cooking soup.
Doors at 8pm. Go with an open mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment