Mastered By Guy At The Exchange
Encyclopedia
Mastered by Guy at the Exchange is the second studio album
by Ben Jacobs under his stage name of Max Tundra
. Released on September 2, 2002 through Domino Records in the United Kingdom
and by Tigerbeat6 Records in North America
, making it his first album to be distributed in North America. The album was also Max Tundra's first to be released with vocals on nearly all the tracks.
Two singles were released from the album: "Lysine" and "Cabasa". The album failed to chart in both the United Kingdom and the United States
, but received high critical acclaim with the music webzine Pitchfork Media
referring to the album as a "A massive achievement" and placed it on their list of Top 50 albums of 2002.
. In an interview with Pitchfork Media
he explained that "The songs are extremely different from those on the first record. When I was writing Some Best Friend, I thought of all sorts of weird and wonderful machines and instruments I could use to make noises, but singing never occurred to me. I had never considered using my voice on any Max Tundra record ever, but hey, I like to keep things varied, so this time round I figured what the hell!" Max Tundra found it difficult to write lyrics as well, saying "I'm getting to grips with writing lyrics, but it is somewhat more difficult than anything I've done before... The lyrics themselves are taking ages to write-- it's something I'm not used to." The other vocalist on the album is Becky Jacobs who is Max Tundra's sister. The album's title is literal; it was mastered
by Guy Davie at a studio named The Exchange.
noted recurring themes included "unaffected tales of Food Chemistry, bands splitting up, employment history and even an homage to video maker Michel Gondry." while Pitchfork Media
noted theme of "girls he's loved or loves, complaints about his day jobs". The lyrics are also littered with musical references. References range from trance music
and the band Yes
where he sings "Downstair's they're playing trance again / that awful bendy guitar / up through the floor again / It's 9am till I cry / And Time and a Word
my friend / Inspires me more than guitars". Pitchfork also described the song "Gondry" as a plea to filmmaker and music video director Michel Gondry
to direct one for him with lyrics referencing his music videos for "Let Forever Be
" and "Around the World
". Stylus Magazine
described the album's first single for "Lysine" as sounding like a nutrition manual with lyrics of "many foods are rich in arginine
, concentrate on the ones with more lysine
". Max Tundra has also stated that not everything he wrote about actually happened. In an interview with Stylus Magazine, he proclaimed that "half the lyrics on that album are true and half are false, but I’m not gonna tell you which half."
's Green Gartside
and Prince
. The album's music style has been described by Allmusic as a "jumpy collision of found sounds, Squarepusher
-type beat thrashes, and jaunty wrestling with "real" instrumentation." In a review from the BBC
noted of "songs which shift gears regularly, ending up in places their openings barely hint at". The BBC pointed out "Cabasa" which "starts life as lopsided techno
and ends up as a slice of piano driven barrelhouse boogie" and "Hilted" which "mutates from Commodore 64
game soundtrack to sunkissed acoustic guitar
pop
". The BBC's view was reflected in Stylus Magazine
's review the album which stated that "You may have heard the pounding house anthem that “Labial” sounds vaguely like, but the prog flourishes will catch you off guard".
in North America
and Domino in the United Kingdom
. The album failed to chart in the United States and was not reviewed by many critics but was received positively by those who did. Kingsley Marshall of the online music database Allmusic gave the album four out of five star rating, comparing the album's style to Prince
and Squarepusher
. The BBC
's Peter Marsh wrote positively that Max Tundra has "come up with an album which has more ideas per minute than most of his contemporaries can manage over the course of a career." Chris Dahlen of Pitchfork Media
gave the album a very positive review, referring to the album as "A massive achievement" and claiming that there was "so many synths, beeps, beats, glitches, horns, hooks, voices. It shouldn't work. But it does. Perfectly." Pitchfork Media also listed the album as the 12th best album on their list of top 50 albums of 2002, and 52nd on their list of the top 100 albums released between 2000 and 2004. Pitchfork Media
also placed the album at number 182 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s.
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
by Ben Jacobs under his stage name of Max Tundra
Max Tundra
Ben Jacobs, more commonly known by the stage name Max Tundra, is an English multi-instrumental musician, singer and music producer. His work is predominantly electronic music but incorporates non-electronic styles and instruments...
. Released on September 2, 2002 through Domino Records in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and by Tigerbeat6 Records in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, making it his first album to be distributed in North America. The album was also Max Tundra's first to be released with vocals on nearly all the tracks.
Two singles were released from the album: "Lysine" and "Cabasa". The album failed to chart in both the United Kingdom and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, but received high critical acclaim with the music webzine Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
referring to the album as a "A massive achievement" and placed it on their list of Top 50 albums of 2002.
Production
Mastered by Guy at the Exchange was the first Max Tundra record to use vocalsSinging
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
. In an interview with Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
he explained that "The songs are extremely different from those on the first record. When I was writing Some Best Friend, I thought of all sorts of weird and wonderful machines and instruments I could use to make noises, but singing never occurred to me. I had never considered using my voice on any Max Tundra record ever, but hey, I like to keep things varied, so this time round I figured what the hell!" Max Tundra found it difficult to write lyrics as well, saying "I'm getting to grips with writing lyrics, but it is somewhat more difficult than anything I've done before... The lyrics themselves are taking ages to write-- it's something I'm not used to." The other vocalist on the album is Becky Jacobs who is Max Tundra's sister. The album's title is literal; it was mastered
Audio mastering
Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
by Guy Davie at a studio named The Exchange.
Lyrics
This is Tundra's first album with vocals, and all but one of the tracks have vocals. The lyrics on Mastered by Guy at the Exchange have been described as not being rich with subtext. Max Tundra refers to this on "Labial" with "I only sing about things that happen to me/ I never learned to fill my songs with allegory" The BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
noted recurring themes included "unaffected tales of Food Chemistry, bands splitting up, employment history and even an homage to video maker Michel Gondry." while Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
noted theme of "girls he's loved or loves, complaints about his day jobs". The lyrics are also littered with musical references. References range from trance music
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
and the band Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
where he sings "Downstair's they're playing trance again / that awful bendy guitar / up through the floor again / It's 9am till I cry / And Time and a Word
Time and a Word
Time and a Word is the second album by progressive rock band Yes, released in mid-1970 in the UK and November 1970 in the US. This was the last Yes album to feature the group's original line-up, as Peter Banks was fired before the album's release....
my friend / Inspires me more than guitars". Pitchfork also described the song "Gondry" as a plea to filmmaker and music video director Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry is an Academy Award winning filmmaker, whose works include being a commercial director, music video director, and a screenwriter. He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène. - Life and career :...
to direct one for him with lyrics referencing his music videos for "Let Forever Be
Let Forever Be
"Let Forever Be" is a song by English big beat band The Chemical Brothers, released as the second single from their third album Surrender. It contains the vocals of Noel Gallagher of Oasis, who also co-wrote the song....
" and "Around the World
Around the World (Daft Punk song)
"Around the World" is a song by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk. It appeared on the duo's debut album, Homework and was released as a single the same year. It subsequently became a major club hit around the world and arrived at #1 in dance charts. The song is particularly known for the...
". Stylus Magazine
Stylus Magazine
Stylus Magazine was an online music and film magazine launched in 2002. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, a number of different podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog....
described the album's first single for "Lysine" as sounding like a nutrition manual with lyrics of "many foods are rich in arginine
Arginine
Arginine is an α-amino acid. The L-form is one of the 20 most common natural amino acids. At the level of molecular genetics, in the structure of the messenger ribonucleic acid mRNA, CGU, CGC, CGA, CGG, AGA, and AGG, are the triplets of nucleotide bases or codons that codify for arginine during...
, concentrate on the ones with more lysine
Lysine
Lysine is an α-amino acid with the chemical formula HO2CCH4NH2. It is an essential amino acid, which means that the human body cannot synthesize it. Its codons are AAA and AAG....
". Max Tundra has also stated that not everything he wrote about actually happened. In an interview with Stylus Magazine, he proclaimed that "half the lyrics on that album are true and half are false, but I’m not gonna tell you which half."
Style
Max Tundra's vocals have been described as "high, mellifluous" and that they resemble Scritti PolittiScritti Politti
Scritti Politti are a British band, originally formed in 1977 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Although there have been various changes to the line-up, Cardiff-born singer-songwriter Green Gartside was the founding member of the band and the only member to have remained throughout the group's...
's Green Gartside
Green Gartside
Green Gartside , is a British musician, and the frontman of the band Scritti Politti....
and Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
. The album's music style has been described by Allmusic as a "jumpy collision of found sounds, Squarepusher
Squarepusher
Squarepusher is the performing pseudonym of Tom Jenkinson, an English electronic music artist signed to Warp Records. He specialises in the electronic music genres of drum and bass and acid, with a significant jazz and musique concrète influence....
-type beat thrashes, and jaunty wrestling with "real" instrumentation." In a review from the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
noted of "songs which shift gears regularly, ending up in places their openings barely hint at". The BBC pointed out "Cabasa" which "starts life as lopsided techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
and ends up as a slice of piano driven barrelhouse boogie" and "Hilted" which "mutates from Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
game soundtrack to sunkissed acoustic guitar
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
". The BBC's view was reflected in Stylus Magazine
Stylus Magazine
Stylus Magazine was an online music and film magazine launched in 2002. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, a number of different podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog....
's review the album which stated that "You may have heard the pounding house anthem that “Labial” sounds vaguely like, but the prog flourishes will catch you off guard".
Release and reception
Mastered by Guy at the Exchange was released in 2002 by Tigerbeat6Tigerbeat6
Tigerbeat6 is a San Francisco and Berlin based independent and electronic record label run by Kid606. The name reflects Kid606's obsession with cats, which also comes to light in the catalogue numbers, all of which start with MEOW, and is also a loose reference to the top-selling teen magazine,...
in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and Domino in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The album failed to chart in the United States and was not reviewed by many critics but was received positively by those who did. Kingsley Marshall of the online music database Allmusic gave the album four out of five star rating, comparing the album's style to Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
and Squarepusher
Squarepusher
Squarepusher is the performing pseudonym of Tom Jenkinson, an English electronic music artist signed to Warp Records. He specialises in the electronic music genres of drum and bass and acid, with a significant jazz and musique concrète influence....
. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Peter Marsh wrote positively that Max Tundra has "come up with an album which has more ideas per minute than most of his contemporaries can manage over the course of a career." Chris Dahlen of Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
gave the album a very positive review, referring to the album as "A massive achievement" and claiming that there was "so many synths, beeps, beats, glitches, horns, hooks, voices. It shouldn't work. But it does. Perfectly." Pitchfork Media also listed the album as the 12th best album on their list of top 50 albums of 2002, and 52nd on their list of the top 100 albums released between 2000 and 2004. Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
also placed the album at number 182 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s.
Track listing
Personnel
- Max TundraMax TundraBen Jacobs, more commonly known by the stage name Max Tundra, is an English multi-instrumental musician, singer and music producer. His work is predominantly electronic music but incorporates non-electronic styles and instruments...
- vocals, various instruments, programming - Becky Jacobs - vocals
- Ben Payne - voiceVoiceVoice may refer to:* Human voice* Voice control or voice activation* Writer's voice* Voice acting* Voice vote* Voice message-In film:* Voice , a 2005 South Korean film* The Voice , a 2010 Turkish horror film directed by Ümit Ünal...
- Guy Davie - masteringAudio masteringMastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
- Alom Shaha - voice
- Lucy Kendra - voice
Release history
| Region | Date | Label | Format | Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... |
September 2, 2002 | Domino Records | LP Gramophone record A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove... |
WIGLP112 |
| CD Compact Disc The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,... |
WIGCD112 | |||
| United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... |
November 4, 2002 | Tigerbeat6 Records | CD | MEOW062 |
External links
- Mastered by Guy at the Exchange at Domino Records
- Mastered by Guy at the Exchange at Tigerbeat6Tigerbeat6Tigerbeat6 is a San Francisco and Berlin based independent and electronic record label run by Kid606. The name reflects Kid606's obsession with cats, which also comes to light in the catalogue numbers, all of which start with MEOW, and is also a loose reference to the top-selling teen magazine,...