Perfect Sound Forever

The Hidden World of Tortoise


Photo: Brainwash Tortoise site

by Jeff Penczak (October 2000)

A couple of minutes into "Magnet Pulls Through," the leadoff track on Tortoise's eponymously titled 1994 debut on Thrill Jockey, you can be forgiven for wondering "When are these guys gonna stop fooling around and start the song?!" Bundy K. Brown's distant metalic plucking segues into a rolling, funky bassline over which John McIntire snaps out syncopated snare fillers. A few left turns into vintage Crimsonesque time changes later, the song wanders off as unobtrusively as it arrived. Even "Ry Cooder" (no relation) kicks off with some buried mutterings that sound like the guys are discussing where they want to take the ensuing song before McIntire and fellow vibesman John Herndon lay down a lighter than air, jazzy melody to bring the thing home.

By the time "Onions Wrapped in Rubber" drifts off into ominous "speaker hum" territory, sounding like nothing less than electronic signals launched into outer space in search of intelligent life in distant galaxies, a pattern begins to emerge which the band would pretty much stick to on subsequent biennial releases: Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) and TNT (1998). At times it seems as if you've wandered into someone's rehearsal space right into the middle of an endless, occasionally aimless jam (as on the somewhat tedious sidelong "Djed" which opens Millions Now Living….) Other times, the band will find a groove centered around a riff and run it so far into the ground you'd swear the needle was stuck (another bad habit picked up from Crimson, and one which even McIntire admitted overstayed its welcome – see below.) The 8½ minute "Spiderwebbed" off the debut is an excellent illustration of this latter element.

However, there's no denying the downright catchiness of some of their melodies and it is this hidden ace-in-the-hole that rescues Tortoise from the scrapheap of the 90s post-modern cutout bins. As their name suggests, there is more than meets the eyes and ears when one cracks open the shrinkwrap on any of their releases. For starters, all of that manufactured chaos was very carefully planned. Although the debut has a very loose, almost jam session quality to it, everything was recorded and mixed in under a week. The songs were all written out beforehand, with only some additional tape looping and electronics added in the studio.

Then there's those credits! The debut's are written in almost invisible ink and one has to hold the package askance under the light to read them. Millions Now Living… presents a similar challenge, with the silver lettered "thank you's" and "aided and abetted by's" hidden amidst the credits proper. By TNT, they've abandoned the credits altogether, although you can find most of the participants hiding within the voluminous multilingual liners on the back cover.

All this anonymity is par for the course for a band with so many multi-instrumentalists, it's nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly who's doing what on any given song (I'm not even sure I've attributed those parts correctly back at the beginning of this piece.) Formed in Chicago in 1990 around the rhythm section of Doug McCombs (various basses) and John Herndon (vibes, keys and drums), Tortoise began to take shape when John and Doug added drummer and second vibe player, John McIntire, guitarist and second bass player, Bundy K. Brown and drummer/percussionist, Dan Bitney. Everyone seems to lend a hand with the frequent electronic interludes which act as segues between (and, often within) tracks. Throw in a Tibetan cowbell, a Sharp TV, Realistic tape recorder and a #64 rubber band and you're in for one hell of a New Year's Eve party – Tortoise style!

This "all for one – one for all" approach to each project is further exemplified by McIntire's frequent comment that "Tortoise is eternally evolving. We play with whoever's available." That "whoever's available" has included a virtual who's who of the Chicago indie/jazz scene, including Archer Prewitt and Sam Prekop (of Sea & Cake, who McIntire has also drummed with.) Indeed, the "members" of Tortoise have also appeared on (or were/are members of) many of the finest bands to emerge in the last decade: Eleventh Dream Day, Sea and Cake, Poster Children, The Mekons, The For Carnation, Palace, Slint, Red Krayola, Tar Babies, Isotope 217, Chicago Underground Orchestra/Duo/Trio.

In addition to playing with "whoever's available," they also incorporate their many influences into their music, including Stockhausen, Can, Morton Sobotnik, King Tubby, Latin music, krautrock, punk and jazz. McIntire told Dutch online 'zine, Pjoe, "The music we play is very much influenced by the music we all listen to. Everybody puts a bit of their influences into it. The people in this band all have such different backgrounds musically."

Nowhere is this melting pot of euphoria more apparent than in the the 21 minute "Djed," a pastiche of all of the above influences and countless others, particularly dub, "bass and drums" and prog. McCombs has acknowledged the Can references, particularly in the repetitive riffing that serpentines its way throughout. Familiar excerpts from Tubular Bells also pop up now and then to relieve the tedium factor. This tug of war between "Waiting for Godot" frustration and "name that tune" identification allows the listener to settle into a comfortable numbness as the band leads us on a musical journey through their record collections until about halfway through…. Holy shit! What was that?!? A defective CD? The damn record’s skipping! Wait…No, there it goes again. What the…? Oh, seems to be OK now. An ATTENTION grabber borrowing from the old days of "scratching?" No, just one of many instances in their oeuvre where they will start out with a conventional groove, lulling the listener into a relaxed catatonic state and then pull the rug out from under them. Kinda reminds me of the, perhaps apocraphyl, story a friend told me in high school about one of Zappa's concerts where he had whipped the orchestra into a frenzy – building and building up to the climactic denouement only to lean over and fart into the microphone. This surrealistic fucking with our heads is what endears Tortoise to its cult of fanatics, while at the same time is also what infuriates the mass of headscratchers wondering what all the "noise" is about.

The rest of the release pales in comparison: a lot of unfocused MUZAK noodling, a sort of Pirendellian "Five Musicians in Search of A Song" until we reach the final Ennio Morricone-meets-Angelo Badalamenti out "On the Banks of Rivers." Think "Once Upon A Time in Twin Peaks" and you’re in the neighborhhood. I can almost taste the olive in the bottom of my martini.

Release number three (TNT) also introduces us to guitarist number three, Jeff Parker. (Brown left after the debut rather than join the band on the road and second album guitarist Dave Pajo moved to Louisville, Kentucky to concentrate on his Aerial M & The For Carnation projects, although he does contribute. The title track opens with some snazzy drum solo which, unfortunately sounds like it was recorded in the absence of the rest of the band. The basic/constant quartet of McIntire, Bitney, McCombs and Herndon seemlessly integrate Parker into their milieu as he saunters in with one of those riffs you swear you've heard before but can't quite place. The melody keeps things light and airy over the typically Tortoisian jazzy workout. Although this modus operandi has worked well for the band on past releases, TNT benefits from a little more variety and never falls into the trap of déjà vu all over again. McIntire acknowledged these earlier shortcomings, admitting to Fred Mills in Magnet, "Personally, I was getting a little tired of pieces that were based around one riff or something that didn't seem to have any strong melodic ideas. I love that kind of stuff, but with this record I had a real tendency to want to put things in more formal terms: antecedent, consequence, verse/chorus kind of things."

The album also seems to benefit from a little more care in preparation before entering the studio. Songs don't take as circuitous a route arriving at their destination as on previous releases. Gone are the lazy jamming that marred earlier efforts, although there is still the element of surprise to break up the monotony of minimalistic riffage that McIntire was quite right to avoid this time out. McCombs pointed out that the move to their own studio, Soma, gave the band more time to let the tracks breathe: "On our previous two albums, we just knew that we had to be getting done by a certain time and that became a factor in the development of the tunes. So there were some things that we just had to say, 'OK, this is done.'"

With the luxury of relaxation hovering in the air, the band was also able to inflect the new release with some of their recent listening habits. "10 Day Interval," (and its shorter "4 Day" companion) for example, introduce a smooth Latin flavored bassa nova: a coctail which mixes equal parts Sergio Mendes with '60's lounge lizard Burt Bacharach. A perfect accompaniment to some '60's drama featuring, say, Lee Marvin on a midnight drive through the Hollywood Hills.

"I Set My Face to the Hillside" rips off Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, but it's to the band's credit that they can use this beat as a bed to explore the influence minimalism has had on today's generation of instrumental outfits. Perhaps that's why some folks often refer to this style of music as "math rock." Rather than simply mimicking the masters, Tortoise blends Reich, Riley, Morricone, Bacharach, Quincy Jones and innumerable other soundtrack composers from the 60s and 70s with the musical styles of Brazil (bossa nova), Japan (koto) and France (think of Francis Lai's soundtracks for the French New Wave directors, particularly Claude Lelouch's A Man and A Woman and, most especially Live for Life and throw in a little Serge Gainsbourg for good measure) to create an entirely new style – one I call "postiche."

In fact, TNT bears such an uncanny resemblance to the latter soundtrack, I wouldn't be surprised if the guys dined on a steady diet of it during the recording sessions. TNT may be their most cinematic release yet. The music is very visual in its uncanny ability to evoke mental movies in the listener's head. [This cinematic feel to some of their tunes is, perhaps, best exemplified in the debut's "Tin Cans & Twine," which you've all probably heard in Calvin Klein's ad for his Contradictions product a few years ago. McIntire also corralled the band into assisting with the soundtrack he supervised for the film, Out of Reach.]

However, unlike most soundtracks that fall apart without the accompanying visuals to remind the listener of a specific scene, Tortoise's music stands on its own merits as easy listening background ambience to whatever's happening in your everyday life. Put it on and clean the house, have a picnic or fire up the BBQ. I can envision student film makers around the world inundating McIntire & Co. with requests to borrow snippets of their cinematic soundscapes for their Senior Projects. Someday soon, you may just find yourself watching one of these films and asking yourself, "Where have I heard that song before." And chances are, it may be a little Tortoise emerging from its shell.


Jeff Penczak is a frequent contributor to Perfect Sound Forever and is also a DJ on WNTI-FM in Hackettstown, NJ. His 8-10pm Monday evening "No Soap, Radio" show frequently features the music of Tortoise and their myriad offshoots and side projects. Visit his website at www.goes.com/~leapday or write to him at leapday@goes.com.


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