Back in 2004, I assembled an eight-piece band and rehearsed human arrangements of my songs Cakes, Lysine, 6161 and Merman. Then myself and the seven others went to Maida Vale Studios with twenty musical instruments and recorded these versions.  The results were transmitted as the third-to-last ever John Peel Session.  You can hear them here:

http://www.last.fm/music/Max+Tundra/Peel+Session

I made a Myspace page for my remixes.  Considering commissioning me to fiddle about with one of your songs?  Or just interested in what various bands might sound like if produced by Max Tundra?  Go and hear some of my reworkings here:

myspace.com/maxtundraremix




 

Actually, scrub that.  I DESPISE leggings.

The sight of that exposed foot at the end of the hideous eighties fabric pipe sickens me.  It warns "this is all you will ever see of my delightful leg, this ankle here".  And the fabric they're made from; usually plain black utilitarian cotton with maybe a bit of Lycra thrown in, with a bulky seam up the sides to further cheapen the appearance.

They are usually part of an otherwise enjoyable outfit, and feel to me like something of a cop-out, as if it's important to make every other part of the body look wonderful but the legs don't matter.  Either it all matters or none of it does.  Many is the time I have glimpsed a heart-stoppingly stunning dress with these desultorily-attired legs poking half-heartedly out from beneath.

The popular combo for today is a denim skirt with 3/4-length black leggings.  This is an especially cheap- and awful-looking costume, but is overwhelmingly popular.

I LOVE tights though.  For some reason, the entirely-covered leg is far superior to the one where an exposed foot at the base of a legging is slid unadorned into a shoe.  All that heavy fabric, stopping short of any useful foot-sweat-absorbing function.  It seems perverse and counterproductive, like a surgeon operating with fingerless latex gloves.

The tired-looking old pair of leggings:  Worn and washed many times, the deep black faded to darkest grey, covered with tiny burrs like a well-loved pantsuit.  For me the leg is the only part of the body which looks bad encased in this worn-out fabric; old t-shirts, for example, can look great.

I particularly dislike leggings with the bit of "tantalising" lacy fabric at the bottom; this for me is like spotting a delicious Viennese truffle pressed into the chin-crease of Gordon Ramsay.  The incongruous presence of lace acts as a reminder of naughtier outfits, but is an insult to these risqué memories when glimpsed at the base of cheap black/white clingy sweaty cotton.  The moment it is apparent what the lace is attached to, the viewer is slapped briskly round the face and brought sharply from their reverie back to this season's decidedly naff world.

Curiously the inversion of this (i.e. a lacy TOP on a stocking which covers the entire leg and foot) is a delight.  I am intrigued at my attraction/repulsion towards something which is basically the same object the right way up/upside down, although the fabric used in tights/stockings is far more alluring, and there are never those bulky seams up the sides.

As you may have guessed, there are quite a few fashion "statements" that I dislike.  Here are some more:

- Those skirts where the hem is like the hem on a sweatshirt, i.e. about 2 inches long and made of a firmer, tighter fabric, thus gathering the garment around the legs.  The skirts themselves are usually made of t-shirt fabric and, coupled with this type of hem, have the appearance of a top that's fallen down.  (The hem of a skirt or dress is an EXTREMELY important factor in the beauty of the item.)

- A top made of bunched-up, formless gold lamé [no coincidence that the words lamé and lame are so similar] lending the wearer the appearance of a brass model of a diseased tree stump.

- Su Pollard / Timmy Mallet spectacles.

- Ironic moustaches (today's mullets).

- Really big boots with jeans tucked into them.

- Those House Of Holland t-shirts with the massive capital-lettered rhyming fashion rhetoric (e.g. GET YER FREAK ON GILES DEACON, UHU GARETH PUGH).

- Oversized sunglasses.  You might as well wear a fencing visor.

- Pete Doherty's hat and the frequent replicas on the heads of preppy boys.

- Any purposefully mismatched garishly-clashing garments.

Apologies if you regularly dress in any of the above outfits. Feel free to have a pop at my nondescript H&M-wear next time you see me.

Apologies if you once sent me a message and I never replied.  I have a massive backlog of these emails, which I look at, weep, and then log off.  It doesn't mean I don't love you, it's just that I probably shouldn't even be on Myspace, let alone writing back to everyone who contacts me.

Please don't take it personally - it's taking me years to write this third album of mine, so I'm trying to keep distractions to a manageable maximum (the odd movie, a walk in Hyde Park, a cake at Yauatcha).  Rest assured I do read all the messages I receive, and if you tell me to check out your profile songs then I do.  Perhaps your music is better than mine; maybe I am listening to it and feeling insecure about my own creativity as a result of your magnificent progressive rock.

Anyway, you all seem like very nice people, so I hope we can remain friends.  Once this album's finished I'll be a bit more communicative.

So basically I'm working hard on my third album.  You'll have to take my word for it.  I won't be treating you to any previews until it's complete, which could still be a fairly long time away.

Every so often I change the songs in my player, but they tend to be back catalogue items.  For instance just now I put one song from each of my first two albums ("Labial" featuring my sister Becky on vocals, taken from 2002[yes it really is four years {and counting} since I had a new album out]'s Mastered by Guy at The Exchange, and five-part-recorder-harmony-fest "Ah, There's Deek Now - Let's Ask Him", from my 2000 debut LP Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be), as well as a couple of remixes I did for other acts (today you can hear my reconstructions from scratch of "The Owls Go" by the [skyrocketing] Architecture in Helsinki, and "Commando" by [oh, how I miss them] The Monsoon Bassoon).

My new record will contain around ten brand new songs, but thanks to my laboriously luddite working methods it's taking me anything up to three months just to record one track.  Domino will be releasing this LP; this might happen as early as this year, but then again, what's the rush?

That said, I'm deliriously excited about these new songs.  They make everything else I've ever recorded sound more insignificant and ordinary.  I really should spend less time on Myspace and get them finished.