When I met my friend Audrey Maybe I really wanted to get with her; she is smart, cool, beautiful, and odd. So I made her a mix. I don't make mixes for girls anymore because it takes too long and I also don't care what music a girl listens to-- I only ask that they be loyal, good looking, and unembarrassed by my drinking.
Anyway, I made Audrey this dumb mix on one CDR and she was really nice about it and said "it was cool! some songs I knew and some songs I didn't." Two days later she gave me 4 CDRs full of glitches, vocal tracks of Pixies demos, strange versions of songs I knew--but in other languages. They were packaged in a strange purse she had made out of ziplock bags and electrical tape, and all lined with notes of poetry spun out of the song titles and artists names.
One cd had over 100 tracks on it, none of them more than a minute long. It was an amazing expression of a fluently technological and post-modern mind, operating inside a sensitive and intuitive person, very much in tune with basic human conditions of course including love.
Max Tundra was on the mix too and I find the same sort of poetics happening in his music. The song Lights really demonstrates what I'm talking about; a glitchy, sped up voice track that sounds really inhuman is actually saying something really sweet, and sentimental. I've included the i-meem way down below in the interview.
"only last week, I noticed that colours of the lights in my studio
are the same ones that you conjure in my mind."
I met Ben (max tundra) in Austin and he was really cool. You might remember him from my video of SxSW
So without further a-dew, here is a little interview with Max Tundra to get you all revved up for his show at Black Cat TONIGHT! (with Junior Boys!)
Have you ever been in a proper band?
Was in some indie-style bands when I left school, but didn't like having simplistic keyboard lines dictated to me, so learnt all the instruments and went solo.
Are you friends with fatboy slim? Whats his apartment like/ what do you imagine it is like?
He's the renegade master, d for damager, with the ill behaviour. I imagine it is ful-ful-ful-full of-of-of-of mon-mon-mon-mon-money!
Do you think it was lame of Morrissey to make such a stink about smelling meat at Coachella and walking off stage to vomit?
Pretty primadonna-ish. Surely at this point in his career, Mozzer realises that all music festivals have stinky meat stands? Personally the networking industry scumbags messing around with their iPhones at that festival made me sicker than the meat smell.
Have you picked up any weird, high-tech, or cool instruments that you're excited about?
A massive bag of ice in Austin, but it melted by the time I got it off the truck.
Do you believe in aliens?
As long as they don't illegally download my album for free, then yes.
Will you play "lights" in DC?
If you shout out for it from the audience, then yes.
Will we ever have a British president?
There'll be a satanic one before that happens.
Im good at basketball even though i am small. Are you? (this is actually not true)
I am small, yes.
how do you deal with remembering spontaneous inspiration; like when youre on the train and you hum something cool? (in england they call it the tube. fuck.)
I call my cellphone number, sing myself a little voicemail and play it back to me when I get back to the studio.
whats up with deejays; do you think they suck because they dont make their own music? I've heard this said before.
They suck if they slap a load of low bitrate bootleg mp3s together on Ableton, that's for sure.
My friend wrote a short story in all cockney rhyming slang-- do you have any good phrases?
Gypsy's kiss = piss.
Any mix-masters in DC you'd like to give a shout out to?
err, no.
That's cool. Thanks
Anytime.
Want more:
socialize with Max online
+
catch him live @ The Cat tonight with Junior Boys
God loves a cheerful giver.
andrew, find me at the show, perhaps it will work better if there are two people yelling "LIGHTS!". that and our humorous height discrepancy.
as a redux i thought itd be funny to tell you guys that the questions up above were actually the second set of questions i sent to Ben.
upon googling past interviews with him i noticed that they were all standard and exactly the same-- so i lifted a bunch of questions from a scientology survey i got, and also from a notebook of philosophy notes that i found on ambien.
in his defense i gave him no warning about these questions and he tried to answer them in a serious way, as he has done for all his past interviews. he sent me this response
"hey Andrew
I have to say, I'm having trouble answering these questions. Reckon you could send through a couple of more straightforward ones instead? I don't normally ask that, but am totally fazed by these!
Ben"
for your amusement (and personal discovery) here they are:
how do you measure the beauty of art?
walk us through the process of making a song in your bedroom with unlimited ability to duplicate yourself, to reproducing this mass of you onstage?
do you transcend differently between bedroom and stage?
how come people dont transcend to live music so much anymore? is it easier to transcend when you can look at your friends or cute girls instead of the band, as with a DJ?
is transcending to live music a congregational experience, or now a more personal experience?
is your music a personal experience, or a congregational experience?
do you consider the location of your art in time and space when reproducing your art on stage, or is that just something people talk about in philosophy class?
what in this room is really real to you?
do you listen to any new bands that are absolutely embarrassing?
do you really like Irving Berlin and Cole porter and Gershwin, among many other classic songwriters?
is it about the subtlety of their compositions? do you think theres a magic to it?
where is your head when you perform (technical perfection, crowd control, the experience, transcending?)
true or false: there are profound changes impending in the ancient craft of beauty.
true or false: innovations transform the essential techniques of art; transform the notions art.
are musicians affected by ancient human desire to travel and communicate through sound?
is music intrinsically connected to our evolution?
have you ever been visited by an alien, ghost, apparition, ancient spirit, or other worldly presence?
have you had any premonitions regarding your life of music and art?
were you called to art?
are you excited to come to DC?
whats your favorite fancy drink?
this interview was wonderful. thank you, andrew buckstash.
wee little sprout! he unsexily pulled off his hoodie early in the show, moz-like style, and w/ muffin top hanging over says, "yea, i took it off!" and eagerly blew into his awesome melodica. i had fun.