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Mastered by Guy at The Exchange

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Mastered by Guy at The Exchange
Studio album by
Max Tundra
Released2 September 2002 (2002-09-02)
StudioThe Electric Smile, Bristol;[1] Battenburg; Notre Catford
Genre
Length40:59
LabelDomino
ProducerBen Jacobs
Max Tundra chronology
Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be
(2000) 		Mastered by Guy at The Exchange
(2002) 		Parallax Error Beheads You
(2008)
Singles from
Mastered by Guy at The Exchange
  1. "Lysine"
    Released: 5 August 2002
  2. "Cabasa"
    Released: 21 April 2003

Mastered by Guy at The Exchange is the second studio album by Ben Jacobs under his stage name of Max Tundra. Released on 2 September 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 website Pitchfork referring to the album as a "A massive achievement" and placed it on their list of Top 50 albums of 2002.

Production

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Mastered by Guy at The Exchange was the first Max Tundra album to incorporate vocals with lyrics. In an interview with Pitchfork, Jacobs explained that the album's songs "are extremely different from those on the first record. When I was writing Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be, I thought of all sorts of weird and wonderful machines and instruments I could use to make noises, but singing never occurred to me."[5] Jacobs had previously sung in a "Will Oldham pastiche" cover version of Taylor Dayne's "Tell it to My Heart", released as a B-side to the "Ink Me" single.

Jacobs 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."[5] The other vocalist on the album is Becky Jacobs who is his sister.[5] The album's title is literal; it was mastered by Guy Davie at a studio named The Exchange.

Music

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Lyrics

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Mastered by Guy at The Exchange was Jacobs' first album with vocals, and all but one of the tracks have vocals;[6][7] the lyrics of the songs on the album have been described as being stream of consciousness and are often not rich with subtext, instead being literal or didactic.[6] 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".[7] However, Jacobs also stated that not everything he wrote about actually happened; "half the lyrics on that album are true and half are false, but I'm not gonna tell you which half."[8] The BBC noted themes including "unaffected tales of Food Chemistry, bands splitting up, employment history,"[9] while Pitchfork noted themes of "girls he's loved or loves, complaints about his day jobs", and various musical references.[6]

In "Merman", Jacobs wrote about his living situation in a flat where an upstairs neighbor regularly performed DJ sets: "Downstairs 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".[6][7] The lyrics to "MBGATE" are derived from a passage taken from The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. Stylus Magazine described the album's first single, "Lysine", as comically resembling a nutrition manual; "many foods are rich in arginine, concentrate on the ones with more lysine".[10] "Gondry" was written as a lighthearted plea to the French music video director Michel Gondry to direct a music video for Jacobs, with lyrics referencing his music videos for "Let Forever Be" and "Around the World".[6][7] Gondry himself included the song at the end of his Work of Director retrospective on DVD.

Style

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Max Tundra's vocals were described as "high, mellifluous", resembling Scritti Politti's Green Gartside and Prince.[6][11] The album's music style was described by AllMusic as a "jumpy collision of found sounds, Squarepusher-type beat thrashes, and jaunty wrestling with "real" instrumentation."[11] A review from the BBC noted that the album's songs "shift gears regularly, ending up in places their openings barely hint at",[9] pointing 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".[9] 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".[10]

Release and reception

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Music producer and PC Music founder A.G. Cook, pictured here in 2022, championed the album.
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[11]
Muzik[12]
Pitchfork9.3/10[6]
Playlouder3.5/5[13]
Stylus MagazineA[10]
Tiny Mix Tapes4/5[14]

Mastered by Guy at The Exchange was released in 2002 by Tigerbeat6 in North America and Domino in the United Kingdom.[15][16] The album failed to chart in the United States and was not reviewed by many critics but was received positively by those who did.[11][17] 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.[11] 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."[9] Chris Dahlen of Pitchfork 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."[6] Pitchfork also listed the album as the 12th best album on their list of top 50 albums of 2002,[18] and 52nd on their list of the top 100 albums released between 2000 and 2004.[19] Pitchfork also placed the album at number 182 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s.[20]

In 2022, electronic musician and PC Music founder A.G. Cook praised the album: "Mastered by Guy at the Exchange is a true cult album—a playful monolith that sounds both nothing and everything like the 2000s. Stumbling across it as a teenager, it reinforced a hunch I had: that music is a place where anything could happen, and total chaos could be held together by the lightest of pop hooks. There’s an oddly British quality to Max Tundra’s work, a soft and polite maximalism – pioneering, eccentric and infinitely remixable."

Track listing

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All tracks are written by Ben Jacobs.

No.TitleLength
1."Merman"1:56
2."MBGATE"2:27
3."Lysine"4:02
4."Fuerte"2:07
5."Pocket"0:59
6."Cabasa"7:12
7."61over"1:08
8."Lights"1:39
9."Hilted"2:50
10."Acorns"3:26
11."Gondry"3:26
12."Labial"6:09

Personnel

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  • Max Tundra – vocals, various instruments, programming
  • Becky Jacobs – vocals
  • Ben Payne – voice
  • Guy Davie – mastering
  • Alom Shaha – voice
  • Lucy Kendra – voice

Release history

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Region Date Label Format Catalog
United Kingdom 2 September 2002 Domino LP WIGLP112[21]
CD WIGCD112[21]
United States 4 November 2002 Tigerbeat6 CD MEOW062[21]

References

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  1. ^ "Classic album: Max Tundra on Mastered by Guy at the Exchange". 30 August 2022.
  2. ^ Ross Hoffman, K. "Max Tundra: Styles". AllMusic. Retrieved 1 December 2008.
  3. ^ Pitchfork Staff (2 October 2009). "The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s". Pitchfork. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
  4. ^ Mr. P (14 December 2006). "Max Tundra - Mastered by Guy at the Exchange". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved 4 August 2025.
  5. ^ a b c LeMay, Matt (1 January 2002). "Interview: Max Tundra". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 15 June 2008. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Dahlen, Chris (20 October 2002). "Max Tundra: Mastered by Guy at the Exchange". Pitchfork. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  7. ^ a b c d Max Tundra. "Lyrics". Max Tundra. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  8. ^ Powell, Mike (2 April 2007). "Hi! Max Tundra". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 10 February 2009. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  9. ^ a b c d Marsh, Peter (20 October 2002). "Max Tundra Mastered by Guy at the Exchange Review". BBC Music. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  10. ^ a b c Martin, Tyler (1 September 2003). "Max Tundra – Mastered by the Guy at the Exchange – Review". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 10 February 2009. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  11. ^ a b c d e Marshall, Kingsley. "Mastered by Guy at the Exchange – Max Tundra". AllMusic. Retrieved 8 May 2012.
  12. ^ Bell, Duncan (September 2002). "Max Tundra: Mastered by Guy at the Exchange (Domino)". Muzik (88): 108.
  13. ^ Moffat, Iain (3 September 2002). "Mastered By Guy at the Exchange by Max Tundra". Playlouder. Archived from the original on 20 February 2003. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  14. ^ Mr P. "Max Tundra – Mastered by Guy at the Exchange". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
  15. ^ "Domino". Domino Records. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  16. ^ "Tigerbeat6". Tigerbeat6. Archived from the original on 28 October 2007. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  17. ^ Warwick, Neil; Kutner, Jon; Brown, Tony (2004). The Complete Book of the British Charts. Omnibus Press. ISBN 1-84449-058-0.
  18. ^ Pitchfork staff (1 January 2003). "Top 50 Albums of 2002". Pitchfork. p. 4. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  19. ^ Pitchfork staff (7 February 2005). "The Top 100 Albums of 2000–04". Pitchfork. p. 5. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  20. ^ Pitchfork staff (28 September 2009). "The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s". Pitchfork. p. 1. Retrieved 1 October 2009.
  21. ^ a b c "Discography". Max Tundra. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
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