![]() ![]() Max Tundra’s main instrument is the Amiga 500, an early mass-market home computer whose reputation today rests largely on its capabilities as a gaming console – including its great sound, which made it ideal for Tundra’s music-making. Firstly, Exchange is clearly a pre-Information Age artifact. There are two crucial differences between what Tundra represents and what hyperpop represents. Pop is in the middle of a similar moment right now, and both hyperpop and the contemporary strain of rap-as-rock-as-pop represented by the likes of Post Malone, Lil Peep, and XXXTentacion rejoice in the idea of a world where anything is fair game for cannibalization. If you’re going to call this album hyperpop, you could lob the same term at Mouse On Mars’ Idiology, Sufjan Stevens’ Enjoy Your Rabbit, the Soft Pink Truth’s Do You Party?, Señor Coconut’s El Gran Baile, or Gorillaz’s self-titled debut. Mastered By Guy At The Exchange was born of this moment: an album that takes these recombinant styles and combines them even further. Everyone seemed to suddenly realize the Beach Boys were badass. Stereolab were turning lounge music into krautrock, or vice versa. The puff and snap of IDM, the frenetic rhythms of drum ‘n’ bass, and the pops and clicks of microhouse were expanding the possibilities of drum programming. Pop and mainstream rap were biting from bhangra, dark ’70s funk, and rave music, with producers like Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Organized Noize, and the Neptunes making music as interesting as anything from the underground. Tokyo’s Shibuya district, home to some of the best-stocked record shops in the world, spawned retro-flipping acts like Pizzicato Five, Cornelius, and Kahimi Karie. ![]() The Avalanches, DJ Shadow, and Jan Jelinek were scaring the shit out of everyone by making records entirely out of samples. ![]() The late ’90s and early 2000s comprised one of pop’s most interesting post-genre moments. But if you’re going to call this hyperpop, it’s a good idea to step back and look at everything else that was being made around the turn of the millennium. It’s pop, it’s prog, it’s electronic, and it’s absolutely brain-frying on a first listen before its twists and turns start to make a skewed version of sense on subsequent spins. This is an album that spits out ideas at an overwhelming rate, cramming short songs like the 1:40 “Lights” and the 1:56 “Merman” with a rock opera’s worth of sections, solos, beat-switches, hooks, asides, and interludes. Listening to 2002’s Mastered By Guy At The Exchange - released 20 years ago today - it’s easy to understand why Cook was so taken with Tundra’s work. Cook seems to be on a mission to spread the Tundra gospel past its small and cultish following of music-crit types, giving his “Lights” a place of honor when Spotify asked him to curate its inaugural “Hyperpop” playlist, remixing his tracks and being remixed by Tundra in turn. Cook, whose PC Music productions did more than anything else to codify the hyperpop genre. The London musician born Ben Jacobs hasn’t released anything as Tundra since 2008, but his name has been popping up a lot lately, usually in connection with fellow Londoner A.G. ![]() If you’re reading this, you probably know that Max Tundra has a good claim to being the Daddy of Hyperpop. ![]()
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