The music of Max Tundra is quick-witted, hyperactive, and packed with ideas that fly by at about a million miles an hour. Consequently, it makes sense that these qualities would accurately describe Max Tundra the man as well. Born Ben Jacobs of London, Tundra is a man of many words - and quick ones at that. He’s got strong opinions and knows precisely what he likes, what he doesn’t like and why, applying finicky observations about the current musical landscape and pop culture to his own music in the same obsessive manner that helps make his albums - however wildly schizophrenic and fast, simultaneously focused, careful, and painstakingly detailed.

I caught up with Tundra during his third tour of the US this year at the Larimer Lounge in Denver, Colorado. Needless to say, he was exhausted, sneaking in a nap between our chat and his show. Amazingly, he was able to muster up the energy his albums point to for his performance, tacking on an extra 10 percent for good measure, bouncing and racing about the stage from instrument to instrument like he was inside a pinball machine. I found Max Tundra to be above all, an intelligent fellow as we touched on his recording process, his experience in the US so far, and the artistic merits of remixing other artists’ songs.

Inyourspeakers: I read that you started your career in electronic music using an Amiga 500 computer. How did you get started with that setup?

Max Tundra: I’m still using the same computer to this day, I should point out.

IYS: To record and compose the music?

MT: To record it. It’s all sort of composed in my head. I tend to approach my studio with the songs kind of already written, so there’s no tinkering around, it’s just there. Then it’s just a question of literally programming it all in. I don’t use the actual sounds that the Amiga makes, because there’s too many people making kind of 8-bit style computer music and I’m not really into that. So, I saved up my money and got an Amiga back in sort of 1986. I used to just do music and play Tetris on it. I never got into computer games, apart from Tetris, which I got obsessed with.

IYS: I’ve been there.

MT: Yeah man. Dreaming of the shapes when you go to sleep.

IYS: Exactly.

MT: So that’s just been in my bedroom for many years, and the great thing about the Amiga is that when it kind of dies on you, which it tends not to do for 20-odd years, you just go on eBay and there’s one on there for really cheap. It’s just so rock solid and steady. It was the most popular home computer at one point, so they’re not like rare or collectible or anything, so literally, if it breaks you just get another one.

IYS: Have you ever considered moving to a different digital media format? Or would that be kind of against the rules? Do you limit yourself at all in that way?

MT: I’ve sort of got these weird rules - it’s funny you should say that. One of the main reasons I don’t go the PC or the Mac route for recording my music is because everyone does that, and also, mostly electronic performers do that, and I kind of hate electronic music, and find a lot of it really, really boring. I hate to be categorized with that sort of gang of people, so I try and not use like Reason and Abelton and all these things. I just want to be doing something where people are saying, “oh that’s kind of weird, I wonder how the hell he did that.” And then they realize that I’ve just been sitting in my room on a sunny day manually programming very complicated drum patterns.

IYS: Do you play live and record yourself, and then go back and sequence the songs through the Amiga?

MT: Kind of. Basically, that’s where I might have worked it up with a song in my head and all the parts of it, and I’m very anxious not to forget it. In the olden days, around the time of the second album, if I was out and about and I had a song idea I’d go to bed, and if I still remembered the song in the morning, then it was catchy enough to keep. But if I forgot it then it wasn’t catchy, therefore I didn’t want to keep it. I’m getting old and I’ve got a really bad memory, so I’m kind of forgetting things a lot of the time, so what I’m doing now is I’m making sure that if I’m at home, I just quickly switch on the studio and record a really basic live version using my synths and layer it up with a sort of basic approximation of what the song is going to be - not in time or anything. And if I’m out and about, then I’ll call myself on the phone, my mobile phone number, and leave myself a voicemail.

IYS: Like a melody? You’ll sing yourself a song?

MT: Yeah, just like walking down the road - people will give you sort of funny looks, just sort of hunched over the phone.

IYS: It’s like a poet bringing a notebook with them or something.

MT: Yeah it’s like that. But I haven’t had any musical ideas for about two years now, so.
IYS: Since the record came out?

MT: Well, some of those songs are quite old. Is was just the recording of the music that took the time, rather than the actual composing of it. It took six years, that record, and I’m just totally bereft of musical ideas now, and hopefully they’ll come back soon. I’m not one of these artists who writes like thousands and thousands of songs, and those were the ten best ones. I literally only write ten songs in six years.

IYS: Were you playing music when you were growing up? What sort of instruments did you start on?

MT: Oh yeah, totally. Just the piano. There was piano in the house which was whole-tone flat, so I would learn how to play all these songs like a tone higher than they were supposed to be played so that they sounded alright. I would just kind of muck around on it, and make little songs and record things on tapes and stuff like that.

IYS: You play all kinds of different instruments on stage. Did you play anything else growing up, or did you pick those up later on?

MT: A lot of the things I play are keyboard-based, so if you can play the piano, you can play those things. But the guitar, actually, I found one in my school in the trash can, there was an acoustic guitar - a child’s one, with no strings on it. So, I took it and put some strings on it, and just taught myself. I’ve never had any guitar lessons and I’m not particularly good at it. But I’ve been playing guitar for a while.

IYS: How has your compositional method evolved over the years?

MT: I try and make every song sound completely different. I like to make every song sound like it’s recorded and produced by someone else each time. I try not to sound like my own stuff ever. But I’m sure I do, it’s inevitable that you end up having a certain sound.

IYS: Your music obviously pulls from many, many styles of music. Can you pick a favorite style and would you say that it focuses your music in a certain direction more than others?

MT: Not really. I try and avoid [styles] with my own stuff, and I think that’s why I’m not massively successful, because it’s very hard to market me. I’m not this dub-step guy, or this lo-fi indie guy. So, even within a song I try not to make it one style of music. So for a few seconds it might sound a bit like Steely Dan, but then it ends up sounding like Daft Punk or something. But not even those particular bands. I’m always quite strict about trying not to rip stuff off. So I don’t really have a favorite style. I get very bored. I used to go out clubbing when I was growing up, and eventually I found it very boring because I don’t like to listen to one style of music for too long. I don’t want to listen to two hours of techno.

IYS: Are there times when your music changes as your tastes change?

MT: I think the music I like and have always liked is music made by people who aren’t examples of any particular genre. I think my music has just changed over the years because I’ve tried to make each album completely different from the previous ones, kind of obsessively. So even if my listening tastes haven’t progressed that much over the years, I think it’s very important if you’re going to put out a new record that it sort of improves on what’s done before, and contrasts with it in nice ways and gives people something unique to listen to.

IYS: Is music your full time job all the time?

MT: It is now - only just though. Only just.

IYS: So when you were recording your last record, were you working a part-time job?

MT: Yeah, one of the reasons it took six years is because I kept running out of money and had to do shitty office work. I’m a fast typist so I’d get a lot of secretarial -style temporary work copying latin, typing letters out, audio typing, stuff like that. I’d like to get to the point where I don’t have to worry about forcing myself to make music to live. It’s horrible that it’s like something that pays the bills, but then it’s also quite cool as well, because it’s better than having a boring office job. But I don’t want it to be like this business.


IYS: You just started playing shows in the US this year. How is it different from the UK so far? Are audiences more or less receptive to your music in the US?

MT: Well it’s very different. I mean, the difference between the US and the UK audience, is that a US audience is less influenced by hype and trends and what they feel like they’re supposed to be listening to. And I find that there’s a real cross-section of people from all different cultures and all different races and ages, and you just don’t get that in the UK Max Tundra show. I mean basically, my audience in the UK is 20-something geeky guys, white guys who often might give me a CD-R of electronic music have made at the end of the show... which... I don’t really enjoy because I listen to things like the Fiery Furnaces and Frank Zappa. But over here, there’s like old women, black guys, Chinese guys... I mean it seems strange to single these out, but for me it’s very exotic to see all those faces in an audience. And it’s nice that you can have these intelligent conversations with people who are just loving the music without caring what their friends think or without going along with musical stereotypes. It’s amazing. It’s great, because we’re all one people right? I mean our backgrounds shouldn’t dictate what music we listen to. It’s just really refreshing... and all ages as well! Young and old, you know, people’s parents coming to the shows and stuff and it just seems like there’s no - well less - bullshit here. It shows that people are really open-minded and honest and care about what they’re listening to, and they don’t care about what their friends think or what’s been hyped that week.

IYS: The time between your first and second records was drastically shorter than the time between your second, and third. What was the difference between those transitions that resulted in such a longer lag time?

MT: I had a very, very productive year in 2001, when I was working on Mastered by Guy at the Exchange because I moved out of London for a year or so to Bristol where the scene’s very quiet. So I was in Bristol and I didn’t really know anyone, and it just meant I could just stay indoors. I just got this record done.

IYS: So you were able to sit down and concentrate for a long stretch at once.

MT: Pretty much, yeah. And as I said earlier, the necessity for having to work meant that... the latest album had to take six years. But also, if you listen to it, there’s just a hell of a lot going on. It just took ages. It was painstaking, some of it.

IYS: You were working on a lot of remixes in the down time as well. Did the artists (Franz Ferdinand, Von Südenfeld) approach you about that, or was that something you sought after yourself? What kind of advantages and challenges does remixing other bands give you as an artist?

MT: There’s a different story for every single remix I’ve ever done. Usually it’ll be the label getting in touch with me. The Franz Ferdinand one was me hassling Domino actually, because they’re on the same label as me. And I just said, “Come on, it makes sense for you to draw attention to one of your smaller artists by letting them remix some of the bigger ones.” The remix is an ongoing thing, it’s one of the ways I get to practice using my equipment, and little techniques. I take them less seriously than I take the Max Tundra stuff. I recently did one for this band called Noah and the Whale who are getting quite big, and I didn’t have much time to do it. It usually takes me about a month to do a remix because of my old fashioned studio and the way I work, just getting it sounding right basically. But, I hadn’t done the Noah and the Whale remix and I was flying the next day, so basically I did it in three hours, which is probably to some degree the quickest I’ve ever done a piece of music. And I’m really happy with it. I wanted to experiment with seeing what would happen if I try and do something really quickly. Like, will it change the sound of something, does it sound rushed, does it sound more fun, is there more of a lightness to it because it’s not painstakingly assembled? And it does sound pretty different from my other stuff. It sounds more organic, because there’s lots of live synths on it and stuff.

IYS: I was also going to ask, what is gained or learned through those experiences? But I think you kind of answered that.

MT: Well it’s just about... I mean, when I’m remixing a track, I almost invariably dislike the original track. I find it much harder to remix something I like.

IYS: So you’re trying to take something you don’t like and make it into something that you would have liked to write.

MT: Yeah, I mean the ultimate thing for me would be to get like a Coldplay remix. I’d love to turn those guys into something I’d like to listen to. Most of the time, I’m sort of fairly indifferent about the original tracks, But quite often, I -- I mean, not with Noah and the Whale, I think that’s a quite nice song, but a lot of the time I’ll really, really hate something, and then it’s a real challenge, and you’ve got to sort of pull out all the stops and just turn it into something that you’re pretty happy with.

IYS: You didn’t have any vocals on the first record, and on the second record you recruited your sister Becky, but you didn’t have her on the new album, you did that all yourself. I noticed that the new album has a lot more vocals, so is that becoming more important to you?

MT: You know, people have said that about the new record, but the second album has vocals on every track. The reason you might have thought that is because I only sing some of them, but there is always singing on those tracks. I think there’s one track where it’s like, there’s a spoken word sort of message.

IYS: Wow, I didn’t even realize that!

MT: What happens a lot in my music is there are long instrumental passages as well. And I quite like songs where, you know, there might be a long intro., like “Until We Die,” has three minutes of music before the singing starts. So, when you listen to a Max Tundra record it does sound like sometimes there are instrumental tracks on there, but they’re just bits. The reason Becky’s not on the new album is because she’s in a band called Tunng now. So she’s very busy with that, but also... I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle those notes. Because she has got a really amazing voice, and I felt like I hid behind her and used her for these higher pitched songs, where as this time, I just wanted to do something where I’ve literally done everything myself.

IYS: Would you ever want to collaborate with anyone else?

MT: I don’t think so. I’d like to get some famous vocalists on the next album... well, not necessarily, but that’s the degree to which I’d collaborate I think. Also someday I’d like to have a live band. I did the John Peel session with an eight-piece band where I did these arrangements of songs from the first two albums, and that was quite fun because I played them using like twenty instruments.

IYS: But as far as writing and recording, that’s sort of your project, and yours alone.

MT: Yeah, that’s mine. And I think if I did get a band together, it would be me as the task master saying, like “This is your part. Please play this.” I would use these people like machines and just get them to play little bits I’ve written. Which is kind of rude... [laughter]

IYS: Sometimes you sing about really modern themes --

MT: Well, they were modern when I wrote about them.

IYS: ---like internet themes - social networking and such.
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MT: Yah, and that’s the thing - it really dates the record because I’ll sing about something that might have been a hot topic back in 2002 when I started. Like there’s a mention of Friendster in there, which is kind of laughable at this point. But my defense for that is... people sing about the trees, and rivers and the sun and the moon, and those things are much older than Friendster. So you can sing about old things, or you can sing about things that are only four or five years old.

IYS: Your website has some crazy and awesome links on it. Do you find yourself on the internet all day looking for these things?

MT: I do, unfortunately. Yeah, it’s kind of an addiction. It’s mainly work, I mean, while I’ve got my webmail program open in one window, I might have to look on Twitter, and all this other crap. And it’s such a waste of time. You know, you might be just about to do some work, and then someone sends you a YouTube clip of “Auto-Tune the News,” and you’ve just got to watch that for five minutes. So yeah, the internet is a very dominant part of my life and I sort of wish it was less-so, really.

IYS: What would you say is your biggest challenge or obstacle moving forward as a musician?

MT: Just time. Am I healthy enough to live long enough to do another record? I hope I am. You just don’t know what is going to happen. Right during the third album I was thinking, because it took so long, I might die before this is finished. I was getting a bit morbid about it. But also, just motivation as well. Like sometimes I find it a hassle to switch all the machines on and get on with writing music... like I’d almost rather be doing anything else. But then when the album’s out I’m very proud of it, it’s just getting to that point where instead of going to the cinema or going out and eating some nice food you’re staying indoors and pressing buttons.

Photography by Raven Schillereff