Max Tundra clearly does not like to waste ideas. Listening to his music is to hear an olio of popular music history in a compact time frame. Pop songs are buried underneath layer upon layer of electronic beats, leftfield samples, thick guitar hooks, lounge-inspired piano... you get the idea. This is the musicification of "everything but the kitchen sink." (And I'm not sure what the kitchen sink would be in this case.)
Armed with an Amiga 500, some sequencing software, and a range of live instruments, Max Tundra has thrived in this decade as a consummate musical hunter/gatherer. Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be and the critically-lauded Mastered By Guy at the Exchange showcase his talent for schizophrenic electronic composition. But it's his latest album Parallax Error Beheads You that shines brightest with time. As an immediately bewildering aural experience, it is admittedly not a record for every time, every place or every ear. But when the atmosphere's right (and it often is), the listener is roped into the music similar to how Since I Left You makes a person listen keenly, even during the hundredth time it's on. Though, every play doesn't need to be heard with undivided attention to be enjoyable. When it's all boiled down, it's still just pop music.
On stage, Max Tundra is a one-man show surrounded by gear. And even though he's reconstructing the precision found on his albums, he still finds the space to drop in surprises here and there. On this tour, he's been covering the KLF's "What Time is Love?" and another classic, but from a very different genre. He opens for Junior Boys at Metro on Thursday at 9PM. The show is 18+ and tickets are $15. (Junior Boys aren't too bad either, by the way.)
