Presenting a listening session for Touch, the new album by Tortoise. The recording, available on October 24th via International Anthem, will be played in full through the OJAS sound system during the session. Band member John McEntire will join Tucker Martine, Larry Crane, and KMHD’s Matt Fleeger for a discussion and Q&A following the album’s playback.
Photo: Todd Weaver
“With Touch, the Tortoise bandmembers — Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, and Jeff Parker — harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego towards an abstracted muscularity.
While there are still excursions into the dusky, elegantly gnarled jazz ambience that flourished on landmark works like Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT, Touch is perhaps most remarkable for Tortoise's unapologetic embrace of grand gesture. Aerodynamically re-engineered Krautrock, hand-cranked techno rave-ups, and pointillist spaghetti western fanfares are all imbued with Tortoise's now-signature internal logic — equally alluring and confounding, a puzzle to be savored rather than solved.
The stylistic diversity is also a reflection of the band's current operating circumstances: With two members now in Los Angeles, another in Portland, and just two remaining in the band's Chicago hometown, their creative process has shifted dramatically from when they lived together in a loft space in the late 1990s, honing their sound over endless hours of collective experimentation.
Recorded between the three cities — Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago — Touch is the result of an intentional effort by these five musicians to reconnect, recenter, and reinvigorate their sound for what is perhaps the group’s most diverse release to date.”
— International Anthem
Album Tracklist & Credits
Vexations
Layered
Presence
Works and Days
Elka
Promenade à deux
Axial Seamount
A Title Comes
Rated OG
Oganesson
Night Gang
All music written and performed by Tortoise
Tortoise is Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, Jeff Parker
Viola on “Promenade à deux” - Marta Sofia Honer
Cello on “Promenade à deux” - Skip VonKuske
Field Recordings on “Works and Days” - Tucker Martine
Recorded at Flora Recording and Playback, Portland OR; 64 Sound, Los Angeles CA; Electrical Audio, Chicago IL
Mixed at Soma Electronic Music Studios, Gladstone OR
Recorded and Mixed by John McEntire
Mastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters, Los Angeles CA
Scorpion Photography - Heather Cantrell
Scorpion Sculpture - Martin McEntire
Collage Image - øjeRum
Layout and Design - Jeremiah Chiu
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