Search - Max Tundra :: Parallax Error Beheads You

Hum-able....danceable?

Brent Currie | San Francisco, CA USA | 12/06/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"wow....i'm surprised that i'm the first person to post a review for the latest addition to Max Tundra's catalogue, as its easily one of the top albums of 2008....and its been almost three weeks since it was released!

Max (Ben Jacobs) hasnt put out an album since 2002's schizophrenic Mastered By Guy at The Exchange, a wonderful albeit slept-on album complete with light and feathery vocals and bouncy Peanuts-style piano lines...Parallax Error Beheads You, though,improves upon anything Jacobs has ever touched...the opening trio of songs are elctro-funk heaven...imagine Prince if he was a white Brit singing about ipods and screwing up badly on dates instead of his usual sexcapades...His singing, meanwhile, has improved along with his musical compositions...resulting in something that strikes as both classically pop but out of left field..."Which Song" "Gum Chimes" and "Will Get Fooled Again" perhaps form the strongest opening trio of songs on any release this year....but "Orphaned" and "Until We Die" are even better, with the former firing small snippets of sound at the listener at a disorienting pace...

Ultimately, Parallax Error Beheads You surpasses other amazing 2008 albums from Deerhunter and No Age by creating something giddy, melodically infectious, and strangeley danceable...The cute lyrics and shimmering, bouncing melodies also prove both warm and inviting....an incredible album...whether it be listened to on your ipod as you walk to class....listened to on your laptop while you finish up a paper at 3 in the morning...or listened to in the company of friends..."

What a Pleasant Glitch

RagtagOperation | 12/22/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Parallax Error Beheads You, for those who were unacquainted with Max Tundra beforehand (as I was), is a shock. To avoid going into too much detail, this is pop. This is electro-pop. But it's not Beatles with electric instruments and synths filtered through ProTools. And I'm reluctant to use IDM, because it's not really dance. It is music for robots who have overthrown their human masters, and then found themselves reticent of the excessive violence they used to liberate themselves; they then tried to imitate the sounds their former overlords once made, called "music," in tribute through adoption of the former civilization's inexplicable cultural mores.



Exhibit A: "Which Song" which is both shameless condensation of Michael Jackson's pop hits into a single song and a flexing of Max Tundra's sequencing and electric-chord-progression muscles.



Exhibit B: "Orphaned" which is a demonstration of how CD skips can still make a melody, and a half decent one. Crackle, static, sharply cut-off fragments, sounds out of nowhere, error messages all julienned, diced, and stuck together. Just as you suspect that's the only substance to the song though, it breaks into an actual song with like, lyrics! It sounds like a demonstration of order in chaos.



So yes, it is challenging and non-conforming, in a good way! There is something vaguely lacking pretention of the production, perhaps due to framing classic pop structures in this weirdo song architecture. There are stand-outs, for sure, like the aforementioned "Which Song," but it's an enjoyable romp all throughout."