Tortoise: Beacons Of Ancestorship

I’ve never seen Alien, I’ve never tasted Sake and I’ve never listened to Tortoise. Over the last couple of weeks I have been putting that to rights, doing all three at once every morning at the crow of the cock. My encounters with the Sarky Alien Tortoise are beginning to bear fruit, but how much this fruit resembles the chosen gut-rot of you Tortoise fans out there is not something I can comment on. Is it a Nectarine? Is it a sweet banana rising from the ashes of the starchy plantain? Or is the potato reverting to its poisonous ancestry? Tuba? No there’s no tuba’s here, but there is a good slab of skronkiness.  

Initially our little tête a tête’s were soured by an imbalance. Tortoise are Kings! How can I possibly approach them with such meagre apparatus. Kings of what I didn’t know, except that their kingdom shared borders with The Jazz Banana Republic, and that an exiled group of upstarts are responsible for a lot of piss-poor instrumental rock. What if I don’t like it? The first rule of guerrilla warfare is to know the country, to develop a firm base in the jungle and earn the respect and affiliation of the peasant folk. I didn’t have chance! Fortunately for me there is no overweight monarch slumped astride the Beacons of Ancestorship, so instead I took a tourist bus through this new city. Sort of like judging Lhasa by spending a few weeks in the new Chinese suburbs. No, it’s not like that at all. But there is a kinky industrial vibration kicking around these parts… 

An admission: The one-off inclusion of Ennio Morrico-Leone arabesque percussion and reverbed guitar in the form of ‘The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One’ renders me rather unfit to judge the album. Because I love Spaghetti Western music in a way I can only explain by informing you that a few nights ago I told my friends that I wanted a track from the Dollars trilogy played at my funeral. The one that has the really epic “HOO- HUH!” in it. I’m like the kid in the Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and this is my Turkish Delight. Unfortunately this doesn’t re-occur on the almost coincidentally titled ‘Prepare Your Coffin’ which is instead the robo-rockiest album closer. 

What this record sounds like is a group of dudes messing around with exceptional toys via exceptional rhythm and a highly individual sense of taste and restraint. Luckily it’s no Nouveau Cuisine; there are a good few chunks of meat, enough to make me feel that I haven’t been ripped off. ‘Monument Six One Thousand’ is very instrumental Radiohead circa right this minute plus Amnesiac (yes yes yes, maybe they’re very Tortoise sometimes, I told you already). Is that drum loop slowing down, or am I speeding up?  

They’re really loving that chunky gravel guitar sound. ‘Charteroak Foundation’ (no, not the Connecticut tax exempt corporation, let me finish) sounds like an alien take on some of the loungey Todd Rundgreny music my housemate has been listening to in between sessions with a ‘13 methods for Closing a Sale’ LP, his latest sick puppy brought home from the carboot. Albeit remixed by someone cool. 

‘High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In’ is a bit of a… what do our American brethren say? A Curveball. It starts out all trip-hop beats, fatty batty bass, and lighter than air synth swirl flutters which mutate into earthy moos and grainy drones. It makes me feel rather expectant of a bit of bombastic explosioneering, but then drops out into some angular jerkalong riffing and offbeat buzz bleats. Like a bomber that doesn’t drop the payload, distracted by pretty colours in the sky, flying over it’s target beyond the war to Never Never Land. It’s light and playful, a mood which dominates the album.  

‘Gigantes’ is one of the “chunk of meat” tracks (alongside ‘Yinxianghechengqi’), hammer dulcimer ringing clear over squelching synthesizers and tight as ever layers of interlocking percussion. They seem to be the kind of band who don’t feel the need to have everybody doing something all of the time, like when you see Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien playing the tambourine sparsely at live shows, and really enjoying himself. Good on you Ed, cause that’s all it needs sometimes, nice tambourine playing. The distant eerie groans of the filtered brass sounds work very well with the glassy synth strings, texturally masterful like most of the record. Why don’t I love it? It’s just that for me this kind of robot gets funky noodling isn’t compatible with my software, haw-haw-haw… it does get a bit bland here and there. 

Semi important paragraph concepts that didn’t make the grade (the sun is shining): I don’t like Pink Floyd so how can you trust me / Damn them for not making an albums worth of ‘The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One’ / Does this sound better in the Big City? / Would it be good to shoot to? Discussions with myself re: lame rip-offs of Hunter Thompson prose / I bet it sounds great live.