For the follow up to his category-defining instrumental debut, Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be, Max Tundra wondered aloud what pop music should sound like.
Duringa glorious summer, with little else to bother him, he concluded that it should be made from a million shards of disco samples, layered and time-stretched vocals, in jokes, literary references, classic rock pomp, proto-dubstep drums, mutant disco, and Game Boy bleeps. His freaky findings would make up the meat of Mastered By Guy At The Exchange. An album of joyous noises and catchy, candy-land glitches and gear changes. All holding happy hands with digital diversions and loose and live instrumentation.
And as fun as it is to listen to, it must have been a waking nightmare to rack correctly on record shop shelves. You might settle into a track that opens with lo-fi rock, only for it wander off into reimagined disco territory. Then, as you get your head around a song about facial herpes medication, another one’s in Spanish. It’s music intended to amuse, confuse, delight and unsettle. Often in the same eight bars. Max explains: “When I make a piece of music, it’s always like, ‘I want this not to be a genre’. So, every single time it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to do a techno track’. Or,
