Tortoise: Classic or Dud

I vehemently disagree with the idea that what they need to do is improvise or cut loose...they all have chops, it would be the easiest thing in the world for them to jam or solo, and the last thing I want to hear. The restraint and emphasis on composition is what made them special imo. TNT still has a lot of magic for me.

Also I think music has kind of caught up with them and their sort of omnivorous approach to influences became increasingly common.

This I agree with, their particular influences sort of feel like a limitation these days rather than a source of inspiration. It would be cool if there was a sense of engagement with more recent music while still being Tortoise-y (or maybe it's just that they've written all their best melodies already).

I always felt like their "Steve Reich influence" in particular was kind of half-assed, and maybe if they really studied Steve Reich they could do something more interesting with that.

Strictly in terms of Tortoise (and cannot overstate this qualifier enough): Parker >>> Pajo = Bundy

I once saw Tortoise close out the Bang on a Can marathon, and while I've usually enjoyed them live, seeing them follow all the much more highly trained and polished musicians playing actual Steve Reich compositions and various other "new music" stuff made them look extremely sloppy.

It's all just very ... surface, from the Reich riffs to the Ennio Morricone stuff and so on. The compositions, basically, and the arrangements, which wouldn't be such heavy anchors if they allowed themselves to cut loose a little. Think of the way a group like Can is able to stretch and explore their ideas. I wish Tortoise could do that. Or would do that.

I wish anyone would do would do that, preferably with me!!

Standards is their best album

(Also they stopped with the serious engagement with electronica and remix culture around the time of Standards and I don't know why, or if that's related too

Huh? Always heard it as their most electronic-sounding album

I listened to TNT a lot in '98-'99. thought it was soundtrack Muzak then, and when I listened to it again a few days ago after someone wrote about its 20th anniversary, it still sounds like Muzak to me. Good Muzak. It's like reading some Waxpoetics piece about bland fusoid jazz albums that are now considered "neglected classics" or listening to someone tell me that John Barry and Morricone are "great composers." Morricone did have his moments as did Barry (Barry's Boom ST is pretty good).

I listened to TNT a lot in '98-'99. thought it was soundtrack Muzak then, and when I listened to it again a few days ago after someone wrote about its 20th anniversary, it still sounds like Muzak to me. Good Muzak. It's like reading some Waxpoetics piece about bland fusoid jazz albums that are now considered "neglected classics" or listening to someone tell me that John Barry and Morricone are "great composers." Morricone did have his moments as did Barry (Barry's Boom ST is pretty good).

sorry for the duplicate post, folks, I musta hit the wrong button.

why are you so reluctant to improvise

Morricone bores me tbh. Tortoise's ersatz Morricone > Morricone. And it's still probably my least favorite part of Tortoise.

Morricone bores me tbh. Tortoise's ersatz Morricone > Morricone. And it's still probably my least favorite part of Tortoise.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, March 12, 2018 5:25 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my feelings exactly, glad someone had the guts to say this.

I always want Morricone soundtracks to sound more like Paris, Texas and I'm always disappointed

I even bought that Ipecac comp of 'weird' Morricone material curated by Alan Bishop, hoping for a gateway, but the constant annoying sex noises made me want to fling the CD from the moving car

Not sure that took "guts", exactly

Oh come on, Morricone is a sacred cow of sacred cows (even if my suspicion is that more people cite him than listen to him)

the paris texas soundtrack is the fountainhead of shit hokey guitar americana

nah

who else are you going to pin it on

Ry Cooder is a guy I feel similarly meh about.

He's an incredible player who has recorded really no solo material I want to listen to. Morricone, on the other hand ...

xp well, if we're talking the past twenty years or so, John Fahey is probably responsible for a lot more subsequent guitar mediocrity than Cooder.

I guess both of those guys' styles are easy for intermediate guitarists to superficially imitate. You don't hear a lot of young guitar players aspiring to sound like Fripp or Ribot or Michael Hedges

Sorry for the digression here!

Michael Hedges is fucking terrible so there's that

I mean if ppl are gonna shit on Fahey then diss kids for not wanting to be the Jaco version of Fahey

despite his rep v few people have a clue what Fahey was even up to, & the best known slices of what he did have largely been influential on the culture at the "damn fingerpicking in open tunings creates such a sweet vibe!" level and the ensuing mediocrity is really nothing to do with him.

how it functions as a soundtrack is a separate discussion, but paris texas is v much all about summoning up that sweet atmosphere, so however clumsily it's aped, there's less to misunderstand. this reminds me of the deliciously not-wrong-but- review of jack rose's red horse, white mule which compared his cover of dark was the night to the paris texas soundtrack

I even bought that Ipecac comp of 'weird' Morricone material curated by Alan Bishop, hoping for a gateway, but the constant annoying sex noises made me want to fling the CD from the moving car

― Paul Ponzi

i wasn't really nuts about that bishop comp

the hard thing about dismissing morricone is that he's done so much stuff that it's hard to genuinely claim one's heard enough to say he's no good

if he was better wouldn't he have done stuff everyone would know to be good despite the volume

if walt rockman was any good he could psychically project his best songs into everybody's mind instead of having them buried on records nobody heard for decades

I mean if ppl are gonna shit on Fahey then diss kids for not wanting to be the Jaco version of Fahey

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 13, 2018 1:04 AM (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think you misunderstand me--I'm definitely not shitting on Fahey. I'm suggesting his style is not especially difficult to ape compared to some other guitarists I named at random whose music is singular and instantly recognizable the moment you hear it (whether you like it or not).

and give me the "Jaco version of Fahey" over inept indie rockers mangling ragas and "country blues" any day

I'm listening to michael hedges properly for the first time & I would like to formally curse ilx

Fahey is almost like a theoretical virtuoso. Ry Cooder is a real virtuoso, but not that interesting to me. The Brits like the Pentangle or Fairport folks, there's some virtuoso for you, on point *and* on theme.

But then, I always thought Jim O'Rourke a sham and fraud. So ...

what's a theoretical virtuoso? like... a composer?

Like, Fahey's big thing is often emulating the spirit of all these old blues guys. So it's less that he has to be a flashy player and more that he must capture that sort of primitive vibe. Like playing a character as much as playing the guitar.

ha yeah, he is much more interested in character/poses/drama/performance/irony etc. than his emulators, who are largely aiming at copying the scenery

thinking about it, i think pajo is a better guitarist than all the other guys we've mentioned

based on what? (I like Pajo)

I bit of what I reckonry, but with Cooder/Fahey it's like the difference between the picturesque and the sublime: the former is safe, soothing and maternal, the latter is Other, dangerous, disturbing. Both equally valid, like, but only one is truly imitable.

Fwiw, I think Tortoise are more the former.

And Jim O'Rourke is kind of fraud, I think (and wouldn't mind be called on it), but he's like David Byrne or someone, where they come so close to the line it actually ceases to matter.

Fwiw, I think Tortoise are more the former.

It's not like they named a song on their first album "Ry Cooder" or anything.

xxp all the others besides Fahey, obviously, I'm not being absurd. Pajo is quietly original and distinctive in his harmonies, tunings and phrasing, and his low-key greatness is attested by his facility for gorgeous elliptical melodies & counter melodies, and he occasionally gets to those moments of joyous heart-bursting immediacy that are worth more than Good Guitarists' whole careers

JOR is very mannered and arch and composerly and sort of hideously superficial but I like him anyway

JOR, man, that guy...no comment. I've now listened to TNT four or five times after basically not hearing it for over a decade. I think it only seems profound, it's wallpaper, but there are moments I adore. Miles, Jon Hassell, David Behrman, they cut them to shreds, though.

Serious question: would you know who Hassell and Behrman (and possibly even Miles) were if you had't heard Tortoise first? I ask because I will freely admit that a lot of this post rock stuff was a gateway for me to dub, fusion, and lots of other music that I listen obsessively to today. I'm sure I was aware of Miles Davis before Tortoise, and might have even heard Kind of Blue or something, but that feeling I got when I heard IASW for the first time and thought "ohhhhh...so this is where it all comes from" might not have ever happened if I didn't read in an Isotope 217 review that that Miles record was a major touchstone for all those Chicago guys

Ditto latest ILX punching bag Jim O'Rourke, without whom I wouldn't know Tony Conrad, Folke Rabe, Loren Connors, possibly Fahey, etc

While I would definitely rather listen to Jon Hassell or Miles than Tortoise or Gastr Del Sol (Behrman not so much), I think the idea that they "cut them to shreds" is maybe overstating it a bit

Tortoise has hooks, though. And beats. That's why it's much less wallpaper-y than what I've heard of Jon Hassell. And why it holds up better than an Isotope 217 or Chicago Underground Duo record. The idea of someone soloing over their music is, like, gross to me.

Jordan otm. I can hum every tune on TNT and I haven't heard the damn thing in over a decade

miles davis is one of the greatest musicians of all time

tortoise made a few nice timely records

Paul, I heard Hassell, Miles, Behrman, Morricone, Reich waaay before I heard Tortoise, whose music hasn't led me to one single thing. To me, Tortoise is an afterthought, sincere young fellows trying to make their nice little demi-fusion thing or whatever that is, and without the balls of the best fusion stuff, or jazz. I like TNT, and it does have some hooks for sure. I think it's a triumph of editing and trimming for sure. To my ears Jon Hassel's stuff is way richer, way less concerned with superficial aspects of music like "hooks," and just plain deeper--his Bluescreen stuff is as kinetic as the music he's imitating or lifting from, wheras Tortoise is...more pallid, suburban, kinda neurotic in a way. This is part of my whole disagreement with post rock--for sure I worked my way backwards from, say, Mahavishnu Ork to Duke Ellington, but at the same time I knew plenty about real jazz--Ellington, 'Trane, Parker, Armstrong, Earl Hines, Basie, Ornette--when I was sitting around grooving to Birds of Fire and whatever the fuck it was, King Crimson or some such thing. My generation, at least, knew about the stuff; and I think the post rockers were just too damned clean, too convinced they were onto something that transcended the dirty old world of jazz and rock. I can't take it very seriously, but as I say, TNT is a record I still quite enjoy, perhaps partly for nostalgic reasons.

superficial aspects of music like "hooks,"

Oh no you did not

Morricone bores me tbh. Tortoise's ersatz Morricone > Morricone. And it's still probably my least favorite part of Tortoise.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, March 12, 2018 5:25 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude do you even know how many soundtracks Morricone has released? in different styles? it's not all speghetti western harmonicats

Ry Cooder is a guy I feel similarly meh about.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, March 12, 2018 5:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's something really conspiratorial about the omnipresence of ry cooder.. like what is the point of ry cooder records? who are they for? sorry, ry.