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Tortoise

TNT - 2023 Reissue

    1998: Tortoise’s third studio album, ‘TNT’, is released. In and out of print over the past decade, Thrill Jockey are happy to finally give everyone what they have been asking for - ‘TNT’ on vinyl again!

    Pressed on high quality virgin vinyl, the double LP is packaged in a deluxe old-style tip-on gatefold jacket, fully replicating the original artwork, and includes a digital download coupon for the first time.

    Tortoise’s third full-length release, ‘TNT’ was written and recorded during a 10-month interval in 1997. This longer-than-usual writing / production schedule was purposefully undertaken by the group in the hopes of crafting an expansive, diverse, yet thematically coherent offering. ‘TNT’ builds upon the spare, instrumental framework of the group’s first, self-titled album, and the extended edits, melodic adventures, and klangfarben of the subsequent full-length release, ‘Millions Now Living Will Never Die’.

    Further to this, Tortoise’s interest in the possibilities offered by the remixing of tracks was realized within the actual production of ‘TNT’; individual elements, sections, or sometimes whole compositions mutate within the album’s shifting framework. These techniques were suitably realized thanks in part to the use of non-linear digital recording and editing methods, the first example of such work for the group.

    TRACK LISTING

    TNT
    Swung From The Gutters
    Ten-Day Interval
    I Set My Fave To The Hillside
    The Equator
    A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Now Work
    The Suspension Bridge At Igazu Falls
    Four-Day Interval
    In Sarah, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Women And Men
    Almost Always Is Nearly Enough
    Jetty
    Everglade

    Tortoise

    Beacons Of Ancestorship

      "Beacons Of Ancestorship" is Tortoise's sixth full-length album, and their first release of new material in five years, since 2004's "It's All Around You". A characteristic Tortoise album is one that traverses an encyclopaedia of styles and reference points, a document of where musical intersections and dialogue are occurring at a given moment in time. "Beacons Of Ancestorship" is no different, with nods to techno, punk, electro, lo-fi noise, cut-up beats, heavily processed synths, and mournful, elegiac dirges. We see these ideas working out in compositions like "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In", an eight-minute track which playfully references the world of ecstatic rave and dance culture with a curiously ambivalent, multi-part suite overlaid with robotic, machine-sounding melodies that stop and start in several different time signatures before the song's ultimate resolution; and again in "Yinxianghechengqi", which begins as a straightforward uptempo math-rocker before steadily accelerating into a wall of fuzzy atonal sqwonk.

      Tracklisting
      1. High Class Slim Came Floatin' In
      2. Prepare Your Coffin
      3. Northern Something
      4. Gigantes
      5. Penumbra
      6. Yinxianghechengqi
      7. Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One
      8. Minors
      9. Monument Six One Thousand
      10. De Chelly
      11. Charteroak Foundation

      Revered Chicago-based instrumental group Tortoise, comprised of Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, have spent 25 years making music that defies description. While the quintet have nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout their acclaimed and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly their own.

      It’s a fact that remains true on the hotly anticipated forthcoming new album ‘The Catastrophist’ (Thrill Jockey) and Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years.

      Recorded at McEntire’s famed Soma Studios, it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cosy up next to hypnotic, bassand- beat missives like ‘Shake Hands With Danger’ and a fantastic cover of David Essex’s 1973 hit song ‘Rock On’ sung by U.S. Maple’s Todd Rittmann. Throughout, the songs on ‘The Catastrophist’ transcend expectations as often as they delight the listen’s eardrums.

      ‘Rock On’ isn’t the only vocal moment on the album. Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley distinctive tones are on the bittersweet classic soul/R&B vibe ballad ‘Yonder Blue’. this also marks the first time a Tortoise album will feature a guest vocalist singing original lyrics.

      ‘Gesceap’, the first track premiered from ‘The Catastrophist’, is a stunning seven-minute long, minimalist rhythmic piece, morphing from two gently intersecting synth lines into a pounding, frenzied full-band finish.

      There’s a deeply intuitive interplay between the group that comes only from two decades of experimentation, revision and improvisation. At a time when our minds are constantly bombarded by myriad distractions, ‘The Catastrophist’ reminds us that there’s something much greater out there. All we have to do is listen.

      TRACK LISTING

      The Catastrophist
      Ox Duke
      Rock On
      Gopher Island
      Shake Hands With Danger
      The Clearing Fills
      Gesceap
      Hot Coffee
      Yonder Blue
      Tesseract
      At Odds With Logic


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