Max Tundra: Parallax Error Beheads You

Max Tundra - Parallax Error Beheads You
(Domino, 2008)
10 out of 10

Today Max Tundra's third LP, Parallax Error Beheads You, is released in England. On November 18th, it comes out in the United States. I've been living with the album for some time now, and even though that's true, even though I live in California and have no personal relationship with Max Tundra — an artist in whom I could say, before 2008 at least, I had an investment of intrigue and enjoyment without being given to endless gushing — I feel a strange sense of pride today. I open my e-mail inbox and see a note from Max Tundra's Yahoo! newsletter group: "New Album Out Today!!!" I would have added a few more exclamation marks (to the subject, not to "Yahoo!" with their damned syntax-breaking trademark), but three seems to be the minimum to do the trick. Ah. Yes. It's out. Thus I present to the readers, humbly, devotedly, truthfully, a mere review.

Say that a man in London named Ben Jacobs has programmed a computer, publicly operational in 1998, called Max Tundra. Its primary purpose is to make units of music centered around pop, dance, prog-rock, similar genres and their subgenres, and so on. Max Tundra is fed sonic information about the history and current nature of these things as Jacobs sees fit, generally beginning around 1973 with some slips into earlier-on, and is designed to be a sort of pop artist AI — not merely a composer, but an arranger and producer as well. Max Tundra's initial efforts up through 2001 are instrumental, but despite its creator lacking the development of the voice in the AI's early stages, it manages to evoke an artist with a palpable enthusiasm for an intelligent angle on pop. In 2002, Max Tundra creates a particularly acclaimed LP "recording" which Jacobs cheekily titles Mastered by Guy at the Exchange. This LP has both male and female vocals on it, and a wide variety of pleasing, up-to-the-minute, mostly-electronic styles. Here we finally begin to see the potential of the AI; the sophistication of its previous executions is now fleshed with a unique relistenability and accessibility. Jacobs hears that potential and, now uninterested in merely clogging the field with baby-step executions towards the next leap in this direction, spends the next six years feeding Max Tundra information.

Now say that the reality is more mundane, but hardly less extraordinary, with results absolutely no less impressive. Say that Jacobs (who, of course, goes by "Max Tundra") is a meticulous artist whose entire arsenal of synthesizers and samplers is triggered, even to this day, by a Commodore Amiga console, and that he performs several of the instrument parts himself as well, those being whichever he has not already meticulously sequenced. Say that it really did take him six years to make this third LP, and say that it does quite resemble, the stretch-like nature of that narrative aside, what might come out of that project — a brilliant computer's take, with certain biases acknowledged, on the last 40 years of brilliant pop music.

Crafted entirely and lovingly by Ben Jacobs, with his semi-surprisingly mellifluous singing on every track (sadly, no sis Becky, lovely to hear on Mastered by Guy, but a negligible loss considering), Parallax Error Beheads You is a modern landmark in sophisticated pop-song composition. Show me an auteur that wouldn't have had to spend at least four years on this; I'll accept two years of dilly-dallying. Frank Zappa, Steely Dan and Scritti Politti are its forefathers. The record label could package an mp3 CD along with it containing Roxy & Elsewhere, Katy Lied and Cupid & Psyche '85 and appreciative listeners who hadn't yet been hipped would only be wiser and bettered for it. But such a holy trinity is not all you get: Cornelius, Prince, grime producers (for a few seconds at the beginning of track 9), Daft Punk, the Zombies, I don't know, fucking Zapp & Roger, whatever and whatever else. It manages to consistently equal and even occasionally improve upon the best work by each of those artists and then some. It's a ten-story, airtight, commercially-zoned madhouse — the Mall of Max Tundra.

I proposed the AI Fake-Postulate to a colleague, who then offered the idea that despite that, doesn't it still manage to be the most humanized thing I've heard in quite a long while? This friend was onto something. He reminded me that my last epoch-defining favorite was Donuts by J Dilla. Donuts was released on Dilla's 34th birthday, made in the hospital where he suffered the illness that he knew was going to soon take his life. It was created by pushing buttons, purely and in every way unemotionlessly, as a way to reach out and sign off the way he knew how — through the creative editing of music. Ben Jacobs may not be on his death bed (the devil forbid), but he's also 34, and like Dilla, he's reached his restless button-pushing, synthesizer-sequencing, number-crunching, falsetto-milking peak; the creativity evidenced on Parallax Error Beheads You speaks of life and livelihood, mostly in the paradox of its restlessness being a product of the patience and endurance required to deliver it.

And I mean, look. If this music, with its (I'll admit it) relentless tone, was all about being happy at the same time as it's making people happy, we might have a problem. We all know how this can work. Jacobs realizes this. These songs are upbeat but he is not the Polyphonic Spree (at all, in any way; forget I said it). "Number Our Days" strings together a skull-crushy industrial synth-pop hook, a Carpenters-style chorus and a nightmare prog-rock coda, all in a length suitable for radio, and it starts with the lyric: "Nothing happens when you die/ You don't leave your body or fly off into the sky/ The deities you count on were just made up by some guy." It goes on to describe some depression. Good luck getting depressed upon hearing it. Therein lies a bit of the beautiful tension. Luckily, when he does dig into a quasi-idyllic topic — on "The Entertainment," so absurdly packed yet he doesn't even let it past three minutes — it's a simple paean to the wandering mind of the budding artist, first some lines about homegrown experimental film and then the assertion that Mr. Tundra (presumably) was "born to entertain." Convincing, this one. "Glycaemic Index Blues," the track that starts like Mike Skinner of the Streets could begin to rap any minute but quickly turns into a Katamari Damacy soundtrack audition, sells you on the joy with some pure absurdist imagery, from the depiction of a scene from a horror film to, well, these bits of information: "That guy from the string quartet/ He's wearing the thing that he won in a drunken bet/ Your friend's trying to call you; it looks like he might be upset." It's as if the scrap-filled hat, like the one that determined the lyrics for Kid A, was filled with hypothetical language-textbook examples.

On an album packed with moments consisting of both parts of songs and the entirety of every single song, somehow there are two Most Epic Achievements. For one, the finale, "Until We Die": this uses a similar hat-scrap lyrical technique, except verse-by-verse rather than line-by-line this time, trading fours with himself on topics including what to do if you can't solve your Rubik's Cube and an Ice Capades production of Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain. It's falsettoed in a soft-rock three-part harmony. After this, the listener enters a realm of repeating minor-key calm, the dub remix of falling asleep to a DVD menu, with barely audible, reverberating voices whispering like ghosts. Tack on a sublimely garish, late-'80s-TV-commercial opener and closer styled to perfection and you have the most unlikely 11-minute album closer since Frank Zappa ever made something exactly like this (for the record, exactly 17 times, and never this good). For the other, in the both coveted and unenviable Third Track position, "Which Song": best song of the year. Hands down. The final minute, most notably, is award-winning. Get swept up.

And starting when, exactly, can you get your hands on this wonderful, unstoppable, flawless new product? Why, today! Yes: Today!!!!!!!

-Spencer Owen

p.s. When Parallax Error Beheads You comes out in the states, I'll be buying a few copies each of the LP and CD. Merry Christmas.

p.p.s. Ben/Max describing and "demonstrating" the album, including a glimpse of his recording set up, as well the the most unique format it's coming out in — a can of soup: