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There wasn't anyone else quite like Tortoise when they first appeared
back in the early 1990s. Their music and its rich mix of genres, styles and
techniques has subsequently proved to be influential on a whole raft of
experimental bands to such an extent that they are often referred to as the
"godfathers of Post-Rock".
After five previous full-length releases and
various other projects including collaborations and remix albums, they now
return with Beacons Of Ancestorship, their first all-new material since
2004's It's All Around You.
Post-Rock is, in fact, the least obvious category into which this music
can be placed, with only a few parts of Monument Six One Thousand really
fitting the bill. Much more prevalent are elements of jazz, or even
jazz-funk (High Class Slim Came Floatin' In, Minors); a sleazy, knowingly
cheesy brand of lounge (Prepare Your Coffin, Penumbra, The Fall Of Seven
Diamonds); electronica (Northern Something) and, of course, progressive rock
(Prepare Your Coffin, Gigantes, Yinxiangechengqi).
It would be doing this album a great disservice, however, were one to
simply play a reductive game of "pin the genre on the track". What such
descriptions would leave out would be the remarkable way in which the band,
in fact, achieve a masterful sense of coherence, in the midst of all this
genre-blending.
Often music this seemingly free-form can leave the listener
with a sense that the artists themselves are unsure where each track, or
each improvised segment, are leading - an unsettling feeling. Here, the end
result, and the confidence of the performance are never in question.
From the super-tight drumming (best exhibited on High Class Slim Came
Floatin' In, Prepare Your Coffin, Yinxianghechengqi, and especially on
Northern Something, where it sounds almost martial) to the synth sounds that
can be authoritative, and hard, deep to the point of
near-inaudibility (Gigantes) or enjoyably funky (Prepare Your Coffin), this
is always unquestionably music that knows itself and is intentional and very
deliberate in the journey (albeit sometimes circuitous) upon which it wishes
to take the listener.
Lovely little flourishes and segues abound: this is an album that merits
repeated and concentrated listening. The way that the opening and closing
tracks use the same trick of repeating a five- or six-note sequence as an
anchor over music that twists and changes in rhythm and tempo, for example;
or the hypnotic quality of Gigantes, with its handclaps, squelchy underwater
synths and exotic strings; or the magnificent, unquantifiable sense of
menace with which Yinxianghechengqi is somehow seamed. One feels that no
matter how many times you hear tracks like Monument Six One Thousand you
will never get a total understanding of its slippy, intertwining,
shifting rhythms and melodies.
Godfathers of Post-Rock, then? Much, much more than this, surely, on this
album's evidence alone. Call it the fascinating intersection of jazz,
lounge, prog and electro, if you must, but ultimately Tortoise
produce music of the most valuable and enduring kind - beyond genres and
labels, in a category all of its own.
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