Buzzin Electronic Music

Max Tundra – Parallax Error Beheads You

Max Tundra – Parallax Error Beheads You – Album Review

A parallax error is a discrepancy between what you see and what is really there, due to the line of view.

This conflict between reality and subjectivity epitomises Max Tundra’s current album, “Parallax Error Beheads You”, as you are plunged into a fantastical world of lo-fi blips, retro analogue sounds, and Nintendo 64-esque break-neck speed tunes, contrasted next to the lonely, very much worldly sounding voice of Max Tundra a.k.a. Ben Jacobs.

Track two, the current single, “Will Get Fooled Again” (great title) darts between this real and virtual world both lyrically and musically.

“Will Get Fooled Again” opens with the standard distortion of a guitar, followed by tinny electronic drums, finally to be completely replaced by the glitches of what sounds like some kind of toy keyboard.

Equally, the lyrics “I found a girl on Google image search” contrast, in the bizarrely effective way that Max Tundra somehow manages to pull off, the clash of virtual and real worlds.
It is six years since Max Tundra’s last album “Mastered By The Guy At The Exchange”, but age has by no means mellowed him. Trying to define each song is a nightmare.  In each new track a thousand, instruments, riffs, time signatures, and genres are to be heard. Track four “My Night Out” starts off with a definite jazz angle; “The Entertainment” begins as an indie ballad but turns into a 90’s dance track after fifty seconds; and on “Which Song” Jacobs messes about with a gloriously melancholy sounding pop melody, contrasted by synth sounds that could easily be from a Mario Kart race.

“Parallax Error Beheads You”comes with an endorsement from Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett’s pseudonym shows his mutual inclination for virtual gaming). For me this comes as little surprise – the extrovert violinist’s description of the first time he saw Max Tundra pretty much sums up how it feels to listen to Parallax Error Beheads You:

“He put on a mask, wrapped himself up in tape and played forty minutes of music made mostly using Amiga sampler tracker software from the late 1980s [...] I was completely wasted and ended up passing out on a beach in my underwear.”

Max Tundra’s “Parallax Error Beheads You” is not an easy album to get into, and at times it is hard to ‘get’ Max Tundra. But there are two ways in which to really enjoy this album. One, you get wasted, listen to it like you are trapped in a game of Super Mario, pass out and wake up on the beach in your underwear; or two, as a quite touching and disturbing depiction of the clash of the real and fantastic in the head of a lonely child. Unfortunately, I live quite far from the beach.

Highlights are “Which Song”, “The Entertainment” and ten minute epic “Until We Die”.

The album is out now on the Domino Records label, and upcoming shows with Hot Chip promise to be quite an experience.