Max Tundra

I saw him live at one of the Brighton Crawls from 1999 or so. He was incredible, he had a big table laid out with a ton of instruments which he would seemingly randomly pick up, play a bit, throw it back, pick something else, play a bit and so on. He had these little keyboard instruments he would play and then throw into the crowd. It was quite manic.... but really good.

I used to do a late night radio show and I got him in to do an hour. I can't actually remember anything about it, apart from he played some Beefheart. The show finished at 1am and he said he was going to stay at his sisters that night. I walked along with him. As we walked along I suddenly got the idea that his sister lived in my road. We kept on walking... he didn't turn off and neither did I. As it happened, he was staying with his sister who lived directly opposite me. Strange coincidence.

Max Tundra (Ben Jacob) is widely underestimated. Belongs in the short list of great (electronic) musicians who fuse electronic and acoustic sounds in the late nineties and beyond (like Tom Jenkinson, Richard James, Mike Paradinas, Mouse On Mars etc) His work is more acoustic-sounding than most and his approach is most similar to Squarepusher's prior to 'Music Is Rotted One Note'(Max never quite sounds 'nihilistic' if that makes any sense). Over the top Drill'nBass drum programming on a Yamaha QY20, with great feeling for nice and simple melodies and very unminimalistic thinking overall.
'Children At Play' on Warp contains two fantastic tracks in that fashion, which (at the time) made me crave for more. Luckily Max released 'Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be' last year and it proved that he is very accomplished, both as 'regular' songcomposer and in his musical 'ideas' throughout. Very cutting edge stuff that sounds great. Like avantgarde without the pretention and that's actually fun to listen to. Like a small and appropriate celebration of being able to freely mix all kinds of music together.
If Kraftwerk was the epitome of 'pure' electronic music, Ben Jacob's music could well be the same for its impure counterpart. For all those who think mixing music ends with DJ Shadow...