WARNING: This is not a brand new album, although this is the first occasion that these tunes have ever been released. The music on this collection was made between 1993 and 1997, during which time I toyed with various daft potential band names including Natalie, Bod, M.T.C and Optimus Prime.

My mum rang up last week to remind me that I had given her this tape all those years ago, and proceeded to play me excerpts down the phone. I had all but forgotten about these tracks and was excited to hear them, so she posted me the cassette and I finally got around to opening a Bandcamp account.

Some of these songs were recorded in the synth-filled back room of the video post-production house where I worked my first day job; others assembled at home with the help of the Amiga I bought with my bar mitzvah money.

I listened to a lot of unadventurous "progressive" house music in those days, which one might deduce based on the 4/4-ness and structural conventionality to the material herein. I don't think I had encountered many weird chords or time signatures yet, as there are markedly fewer here than in subsequent works. It would appear I also had a fairly JAMMs-esque attitude to sampling when I made these tracks. Also, you may spot ideas which found their way into other Max Tundra releases, most notably this set's primitive early incarnation of what eventually became Subsi Kuku on my first Domino LP (still available from dominorecordco.com/mart/artists/max-tundra among other goodies).

My tunes were longer in the nineties, and this collection includes my lengthiest composition to date - Bracken Beach - during which just over a quarter of an hour of your life ticks away. One of the tracks on here features a couple of jingles I submitted to XFM, a London-based "indie" radio station, but I don't think they were ever broadcast. The word "Bistrotheque" was used here a decade before the eponymous and fantastic east London restaurant opened.

I don't like to repeat myself with releases, so none of these songs are available anywhere else. Therefore there are two tracks on the original cassette but missing from this upload. They are Children At Play (my original demo tape which I sent to Warp Records and they released as my debut single in 1998) and a song called Sheffield (which ended up on a sweet cassette-only compilation for gasmanmusic.com entitled Jack The House - pick this up if you dig old-fashioned warehouse-based dance music).

I hope you find it rewarding/interesting/silly, this missing paving slab on the driveway to the music I have since made. I think I just discovered a couple of even older tapes, featuring less "normal"-sounding stuff than WLTM, so watch this space. And who knows, depending on the success of this release, I might put A BRAND NEW AS YET UNWRITTEN MAX TUNDRA ALBUM on here one day.

PS: Apologies for the wow/flutter on Sunfunk (& its terrible title). Also I tried using various de-hissing filters on the cassette audio, but they just made things sound weird and "artifacty", so ssssssssssssssssssss.