Tortoise - It's all around you

And the album? :D

(oh i kill me.)

Rock died?
Bring on the offensive tedium!

And that there's an incentive to hear the new Stereolab if ever there was one...

I can't tell how I feel about this album.

Well, come to think of it, it is, of course, but the album is quite a disappointment compared to Standards' rockish edge and brilliance. It's more like 'Millions' or 'TNT', but without the brilliant standout tracks. Texture-wise, it's still astonishing, but McEntire & co. sometimes give in to jazzy-snazzy-cosiness and spoundtrack pathos here, and that does not really suit them.

Worth a listen. But keep that 'Standards' cd within reach.

I was secretly hoping for a return to TNT prettiness.

Things I love about it:

-- It's short! Under 45 min, even? (cue jokes about it being too long already, etc.)

-- Seriously, is there any other group who are at the same level in terms of being good instrumentalists and able to micro-process there sound? There's such attention to detail throughout the whole record, both in the electronics and tweaking the live sounds.

-- Five Too Many is afro-beat in five!

Things I don't like:

--The vocals on Lithium Stiffs really do sound like cheap keyboard 'aah' presets

Not sure if I love or hate:

--the parts of some early tracks that sound like the soundtrack for an 80s sci-fi movies.

Really enjoying this record, esp. "Crest"

Hated this upon release, need to give it another shot.

Standards still rules all.

this was a big record for me when it came out, haven't really listened to it since though

Wow, near 6 years since the last record. Do they tour or anything nowadays? Would love another record, have never really disliked any of them.

Beacons was probably my least favorite. I liked IIAY a lot.

TNT is still their classic, IIAY is great though.

All the records are lovable and great, I cried like a baby seeing them live for the first time in 2010, hearing them do TNT stuff on a mild amount of MDMA powder in gentle rain on a mild night was too much.

Beacons was probably my least favorite. I liked IIAY a lot.

― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, March 4, 2014 2:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TNT is still their classic, IIAY is great though.

― festival culture (Jordan), Tuesday, March 4, 2014 3:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, I typed the wrong acronym and it caught on

IAAY is great - it's the one i listen to most often because i managed to snag a cheap LP version of it once. i remember that critical reception seemed to be fairly meh upon its release, with some whining that it didn't do enough to expand on tortoise's sound or something. but with some distance, i think it's aged very nicely and it's certainly no slouch in their catalog.

IAAY is great - it's the one i listen to most often because i managed to snag a cheap LP version of it once. i remember that critical reception seemed to be fairly meh upon its release, with some whining that it didn't do enough to expand on tortoise's sound or something. but with some distance, i think it's aged very nicely and it's certainly no slouch in their catalog.

hey guys, IAAY is great. just want to tell you that again

It definitely felt closer to Standards than you'd expect for a record three years later, whereas Standards felt like a pretty big departure from TNT.

IIAY>>>IAAY

critics and ILM have been wrong as fuck on Tortoise for over a decade, and I don't pay them any mind. I think they occupy a space perceived as something like "middlebrow," therefore making it one of the few things that is still cool to hate.

critics and ILM have been wrong as fuck on Tortoise for over a decade, and I don't pay them any mind. I think they occupy a space perceived as something like "middlebrow," therefore making it one of the few things that is still cool to hate.

if the records were 20-30 years older they'd be celebrated as "balearic"

Is It Around You?

yeah this one i was sort of cool on at the time but sounded really strange and wonderful to me last time i listened to it

also hurting basically OTM

If being middlebrow means being a non-boring post rock band then I can live with that

Standards still rules all.

― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, March 4, 2014 7:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Standards is so good and massively underrated. Def my fave. Need to listen to it again soon. High time Tortoise released a new record I think. I kind of forgot they existed.

Standards is good but Millions Now Living Will Never Die is the one for me.

one copy of TNT went for a fairly ridic amount on ebay last month:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TORTOISE-TNT-2x-VINYL-LP-1998-1st-Press-CITY-SLANG-Wow-Million-Now-Living-NM-/171217412500?pt=UK_Records&hash=item27dd5a6194

Blimey I've got a copy of that.

Millions is also really solid.

Spun IAAY last night for the first time forever (i.e. release when I reviewed it somewhere), with no expectations. It was alright! Better than what I remembered.

i know it's kind of dumb but i love how DEEP the bass is on this album

High time Tortoise released a new record I think. I kind of forgot they existed.

― inside out trousers (dog latin), Wednesday, March 5, 2014 4:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If Instagram/Twitter are to be believed looks they were doing some recording last month

Never got the love for Standards. TNT towers high above the rest but IAAY would be my second favorite of theirs.

Standards is great - kind of polyrhythmic jazz fusion IDM. Black Jack is an anthem. It's a really solid blocky and colorful record that came out when the rest of post-rock seemed to be just catching up with Tortoise's monochromatic earlier releases. I can't really tell the difference, stylistically, between Millions and TNT but Standards is Tortoise doing something a bit different.

I wouldn't mind a vinyl copy of it actually - is this easy to get hold of in the UK?

I only recently discovered Drumming and learned how much of my favourite Tortoise was cribbed directly from Steve Reich. TNT is still a gorgeous record only slightly compromised by the hideous album sleeve.

the funny thing about the "steve reich influence" that gets touted so much is that it's mostly just aesthetic. There's really very little about the Reich-y sounding Tortoise tunes that is actually substantively like Steve Reich composition.

tortoise lps seem to be quite pricey in the us.
i love the TNT cover. the debut and millions still my favorite albums but there's great stuff on all of them.

xp I guess it's mostly the contrapuntal marimbas and the way they build their rhythms in a couple of tracks.

i think 'ten day interval' and 'four day interval' are responsible for the Reich comparisons.

If Instagram/Twitter are to be believed looks they were doing some recording last month

touring Japan in May as well

(if 4 nights in Tokyo can be described as a "tour")

Djed is obviously still their towering achievement, be serious you guys. I mean, it's so much better than anything else they've done. Then again, it's so much better than almost anything anyone else has done. So really, not a criticism of the rest of Tortoise. I do think IAAY is a bit too boring and bland, though.

I like the first one best, one weird ass album

I think the trilogy of Sixpack/Eden/Monica on Standards is as good as anything they've done.

fwiw I remember I hated the first Tortoise record when I first heard it. I remember this friend of mine going "Did you find it kind of 'underwhelming'? That's the point." And I was thinking "what does that even mean?"

Well that's just a dumb thing to say. Idk, I really enjoy listening to the early stuff, not going to respond to that.

i hated djed at the time and ignored them for awhile but have since come around to millions and tnt.

Oh yeah I love the early record now. I think what he said just put me off them even more. This was like freshman year of college and "post rock" was a completely new term to me. The guy was even in a local "post rock" band. I was a jazz nerd and I guess I was kind of like "what are these guys doing, they're barely playing anything." I think when TNT came out (shortly after when I first heard the s/t) was when I "got it" and then I was able to work backwards and hear the other two records through the lens of TNT.

*early = first

see i think i was the opposite, i really dug how suis generis and rambling the early stuff could be. i didn't get millions and tnt, sounded too tight and clean and idk mannered or something. It was hearing the first track of Standards that made me go "whoa! maybe i should try millions and tnt again".

I don't think underwhelming is the right word, but I listened to Djed a few days ago and it was a lot more "spare," I guess, than I remember. I still loved it though.

I mean spare in terms of density of sound/instrumentation, not length, obviously.

never found Djed to be particularly better than the rest of their stuff - but it does a good job of encapsulating in 20mins what's great about this band

Djed doesn't sound like 'a band'. It sounds like a million bands being fragmented and re-assembled piece by piece. A lot of their other stuff sounds too bandy to my taste.

I seem to recall I had some version or remix of Djed with a sample at the beginning of someone talking about the blues. Any idea what that was? Just suddenly made the connection between Djed and Black Dices Beaches and Canyons - never connected the two bands before as to me they're entirely different eras and genres but I guess there was always some overlap.

Yeah, for me noise-rock pretty much took over once post-rock became way to predictably mogwai-y. Stuff like Vision Creation Newsun, Beaches and Canyons and Here Comes the Indian seem like the true descendants of Djed, rather than EITS. Or, to be honest, IAAY.

Yeah post-rock became melodramatic slow-build climaxes with annoying sentence long song titles. Far from jazz experiments.

Genuine question: Was post-rock really considered "middlebrow"? I thought the knock on it was that it was too academic, or sexless, or bloodless, or too in debt to its influences ("record-collector rock")...or that it was basically IDM performed by indie-rockers who wanted to be jazz musicians.

Now, I don't agree with that criticism whatsoever, but I was surprised to see it called "middlebrow" upthread.

With that said, I did hear Tortoise on the Weather Channel once.

And a certain contingent of hippie jam-band fans would often be at Tortoise shows, but that's different from middlebrow, I think.

Yikes, I don't hear how VCN, Black Dice or Animal Collective are descendants of Tortoise. If anything, noisey, trancy psych rock like those bands played (circa 2002) becoming popular represents the (good) moment when what my mind wished "post rock" meant actually became what post-rock could be. Tortoise being labeled "middlebrow" makes perfect sense to me, because -- and no offense to fans -- it is precisely the kind of "academic" music that is neither interesting enough musically, or intense enough emotionally, to warrant the amount of praise it got. imo high-minded music to meet low expecations.

that said, the comment re: IDM as played by jazz musicians doesn't seem far off the mark (and isn't, in and of itself, a bad idea in theory)

I don't know, maybe my definition of middlebrow is just off. I mean, if you would have asked me what was middlebrow in the late 90s, I would have said, like, Wilco, or Ben Folds Five or something like that. Not a bunch of guys doing a 20-minute homage to Neu!, dub, and Steve Reich.

that's why the term "middlebrow" is meaningless. it's completely subjective to where you think the middle is.

well, I think it's relative. Tortoise, in a continuum of, say, Wilco on one side, and Boredoms on the other, were middlebrow. But more than that, it was having to hear about the band as some kind of progressive force that really struck a chord with me. To consider a band like that -- to my ears, forging a perfectly *logical, reasonable* end-point music featuring strands of jazz, rock, minimalism and electronic music -- being considered as vanguards in any way, suggested that someone out there placed Tortoise coinsiderably higher on the music importance/complexity/meaning scale than I did.

And again, writing this stuff, I don't want to offend fans. It *is* relative. I certainly have friends who consider Boredoms as being a starter-kit noise rock band for kids like me in the 90s.

Yeah, I mean given "middlebrow's" etymology, I understand the general point is being made above. And my view of what's "middlebrow" during this particular era is probably skewed from being a rural Illinois high school kid at the time.

If you would have asked me after I become a pretentious college radio dick 4 years later, I may have considered Tortoise in the middlebrow. Except I was in the Chicago area, so those dudes were basically heroes to the people I associated with.

it's relative = it's subjective -- that's what i meant! you can never know what any ONE person means by middlebrow because everyone'e experience is relative/subjective.

I was a total fan of Tortoise from the first time I heard the opening record. They are just pretty much a 90s prog indie supergroup that like tons of people was listening to electronic music, in a silent way and stuff like Steve Reich and said hell with it and tried some different sounds.

C'mon if some would have told you mostly the rhythm section folk from the Poster Children, Eleventh Dream Day and Bastro were going to endup doing an instrumental group with a jazzy electronic sound and they will end up popular enough to tour all over the world for quite a few years - you would have been thought mad. The early records up through Standards are all really killer.

I thought all of the records up to Standards were really great. I'm not sure they figured out where to go after that, but there are some fantastic pieces on those early records. They are still a good at what they do band on the later records, but they don't have quite the 'lets see what happens' explorations on the early records. I think some of the really interesting stuff was more about mixing and using the studio as an instrument. They would reproduce it live, but I think why the track might be a mad is more something done in the editing room or mixing board.

Yikes, I don't hear how VCN, Black Dice or Animal Collective are descendants of Tortoise.

― Dominique, 10. marts 2014 23:33 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just to clarify: I said descendants of Djed, not of Tortoise. The rest of what you write, I agree with. Except that Djed totally is what I want post-rock to be. And a lot of that has to do with the use of the studio.

I do like a lot of the rest of Tortoise, though. But 'middlebrow' doesn't seem unfair. Middlebrow stuff can be cool.

I seem to recall I had some version or remix of Djed with a sample at the beginning of someone talking about the blues. Any idea what that was? Just suddenly made the connection between Djed and Black Dices Beaches and Canyons - never connected the two bands before as to me they're entirely different eras and genres but I guess there was always some overlap.

― wank-bond-villain-looking villain, (dog latin), Monday, March 10, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's the UNKLE "Bruise Blood" remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO7YreRk6QA

yeah i'll buy that tortoise is middlebrow but the thing is.. there's nothing wrong with middlebrow. not all music has to sound like faust or whatever

I think the key thing with Tortoise is looking at how their records evolved in line with the evolution of their lineup. They very literally did originate from a punk rock background - the original Tortoise lineup with Bundy K. Brown was an outgrowth of Gastr del Sol, which was itself just a renamed Bastro. So you've got David Grubbs, John McEntire, and Bundy Brown making abrasive rock with Bastro and then making a complete overhaul into something approaching avant-garde music with the first Gastr del Sol album. Nothing in those guys' work, on record at least, points to any kind of training in that realm. So Brown and McEntire go off and hook up with John Herndon and Doug McCombs, also ex-punks, and Dan Bitney. Tortoise's first album is perceived as revolutionary because it was made by indie guys and released on an indie label to an indie audience. For Millions they add David Pajo (ex-punk) and lose Brown. And I think this is the album that is most easily tagged "record collector rock"--and frankly it's probably because that's exactly what it was, a bunch of guys weaned on punk and indie finally embracing a wider scope of music. The first few years of Tortoise releases--first three albums plus various singles and remixes--is kind of exhilarating because it's so omnivorous. But more plainly, they were probably just a young band in search of their voice and they were not shy about experimenting.

By the time they get to TNT though (and especially after), they've been doing it for a long time and I think it's fair enough to say they're not a bunch of naive indie dudes making avant music anymore--they're all incredible musicians who have spent years ingesting tons of influences. They lose Pajo, add Jeff Parker and now the lineup is totally stable for the next fifteen years. It also happens that, from Standards on, their music fully settles into a predictable sound. By now these guys have been doing it long enough that they probably don't give a shit if it's jazz or post-rock, nor does it matter what influenced them or who they influence. And it probably explains why their audience is, by now, widely mixed beyond easily impressed indie kids and cynical record store clerks. Tortoise are not that exciting of a band anymore, and I doubt they ever will be-they're just going to do what they do.

But anyway I think they'll never win with critics because the early stuff shows its influences too much, if you're aware enough of their influences. (If, like me, those influences were mysterious to you when you first heard Tortoise, then they were mind-blowing.) And the new stuff is so comfortable with itself that it bristles against the baggage of expectation the band created in the first place. Like, they're not a supergroup and they're not revolutionary. They're just, as of 1999 or 2000, a unique band who digs what they do.

I always forget about that first album.

what are their mysterious influences, do you mean like krautrock and dub and post punk?

that was kind of how i felt about "djed" at first, just like, "ok, don't really need a more muzaky neu"

Yes - but for me as an 18-year-old from a smallish town, those were mysterious. And I think it's fair that there are a ton of kids out there who love punk or indie who have not spent any time with krautrock or dub or Steve Reich.

Fair *to say*

I was one of those kids at one point.

ok i think i get it now. The first album sounds weird and unique to me because it's punk guys playing with elements of jazz, 'avant garde'.. and it really just sounds wrong and kind of wack sometimes on the first album like it was just not translating correctly. But it was great fun and had cool atmosheres. When they got "good" and started to polish up their style it became a "thing" and lacked the "anything goes"-ish spontaneity.. Everything later on sounding more measured. I think with Tortoise, it is a lol punk thing because it's really about how inspiring their approach was on those early records, not the sound. I mean, no one really thought that fake reich xylephones and melodica solos was the future of music, it was just the freshness of a band mixing ideas together, even if they didn't come out right all the time.
Ugh that all sounds horrible and could be written about literally every band ever but i wrote it so there you go.

I can easily pinpoint Millions as my gateway album. I bought Tago Mago and Music for 18 Musicians within a year of hearing that record.

It's not crazy that those dudes did this band, but it is kind of wild that it got as popular as it did. I tend to doubt that any of those guys thought when they were making those first Tortoise 7"s that they would end up catching on and playing that widely and for that long. It was just something to do. Call it middlebrow whatever, this went way further than any of their other acts that were tied to those guys. Those guys hit the indie rock craps table at the right time with a hot hand.

Dominique p much gets it wrt what I meant by middlebrow. Because coming at them as a jazz guy who had already started to dabble in out jazz and who also listened to classical and a bit of prog, my initial reaction was kind of "where's the beef"? Becusr they didn't se all that challenging or avant to me at the time. But then I just came to appreciate them as a band that makes great sounds.

Part of the appeal with the first few records was the combination of

a] the hints that they could, should they choose to do so, engage with more standard rock protocol (or "rock out" - eg "Ry Cooder", "Glass Museum") and

b] the fact that they do not choose to do so

As with "Nosferatu Man" on "Spiderland" - hey, we could do this all the time, if we wanted to, but that's not what we're ultimately about.

"Punk": I did think there was this strange straightedge aspect to post-rock, ie. pointedly refusing to indulge in more standard or familiar kinds of musical rhetoric or code, but that refusal itself gets codified, sharpish.

thanks pgwp, found it last night. i used to think that was the original version.

The 33 1/3 on Millions should be given to pgwp ASAP.

Haha, thanks.

I think it's very true that they sort of lost what they originally had when they began to sound like themselves. That is obviously a major problem with a lot of experimental bands. However, listening to the new stuff from War on Drugs and Real Estate, it makes me re-realize how unfair that really is. Today, if bands just make sure that they never ever ever sound fresh or different at all, then they can get away with never going anywhere. As soon as you choose to do something new, then you have to keep on sounding new, or people will be dissapointed and lose interest.

For the record, Bitney was also an ex-punk. He was in Madison, WI hardcore band Mecht Mensch, who appeared on a comp with Hüsker Dü and The Replacements.

Actually a lot of what I remember originally being excited about with them (and various related Chicago projects) is that they were dilettantish and made a sound out of it. Like suddenly it seemed possible for a sort-of jazz guy and a sort-of punk guy to get together and play bad imitations of dub reggae and Steve Reich and IDM and Ennio Morricone and swirl it all together til it made a sound, and it was OK that they were just mixing a bunch of influences they hadn't really mastered and they did it successfully. And it was ok for Isotope 217 to sometimes sound like an off approximation of 70s Miles Davis, in fact that was part of its charm. I found Chicago stuff very freeing because there was no sense of "you must have this much chops to ride" that I was used to from jazz, or "you must have this much compositional background to do instrumental pieces" or whatever.

I came to them through IDM IIRC, at the time having heard next-to-no jazz, Kraut, dub etc and they formed my initial understanding of post-rock before that term became a by-line for 'stuff that sounds like Mogwai or GYBE!'.

Today if someone were to say there was a band who mixed of Miles Davis, post-punk, Morricone and IDM I'd be all over it.

Right exactly, I originally thought of post-rock as a concept more than a style, and it was kind of a bummer when it just became a term for this one style of meandery instrumental rock. I think Dirty Projectors are actually a good example of a band that carries on the *spirit* of post-rock.

Cyborg Post Rock, etc. Sick Mouthy wrote a great list on this topic.

So... Are they releasing anything new yet? This thread's been revived a good few days now...

Miles Davis, post-punk, Morricone and IDM I'd be all over it.

Admittedly, I burnt out on Tortoise because for a while they were playing fucking everywhere, but the issue I have always had with the group is that the compositional totally supercedes the improvisational, yet the compositional element - the Morricone, the Reich-rips - always felt like fussy imitation rather than anything particularly inspired. I really wish the band found a way to loosen up a bit. The closest they ever came was by wearing matching jumpsuits. Or, you know, on "Standards," maybe, or the early singles.

Standards strikes me as their best and most original I reckon, but also it's the first I ever heard. Don't hear as many obvious ripoffs in there.

Of all the criticisms that could be levelled at Tortoise, being insufficiently loose is not one of them. Every time I've seen them play it's always struck me how relaxed and gently loping they sound.

Sure, and they do the exact same thing the exact same way the next time. But I don't think the tunes (as such) are strong enough to merit such fealty to the studio version.

in contrast, my girlfriend doesn't like tortoise because they sound 'jammy' or 'noodly', even though there's basically no improvising or soloing going on. :) except maybe in the drums, which is big part of the appeal for me.

my problem, if there is one, is that they're boring. I like them, but they are a bit boring.

Yeah, being boring does that help.

Does not help.

Reckon if there was a band just like Tortoise on Standards but less boring they'd be my favourite band. Think I will start this band.

my friends started that band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB6QbOkntCo

Battles?

Battles is a good one, but they're kind of annoying. I will check out Cougar. Really I guess it's the idea you can mix IASW, dub, post-punk and IDM together into a cogent cool sound that isn't dorky or dull or overly fussy. Maybe that's where a lot of these kinds of bands fail - it's too studied or something? IASW works because it's got a looseness, it feels effortless; same with the best dub and even IDM, back when Aphex was at his prime, had a roughness and a funkiness that eventually got all zipped up once it had turned into an actual 'style'.

I feel like a lot of people who hate Tortoise just don't like music without words.

Yeah, like Miles Davis and Morricone. Snoooze.

I remember a contemporary review of Standards that unfavorably compared parts of it to Mannheim Steamroller.

I kinda want to say the whole Anticon scene kind of parallels tortoise/90s chicago, in the sense that it was a bunch of folks mixing styles up in a scattershot semi-curatorial way, freakin with MPCs and stuff (instead of vibes and stuff) in a 'experimental' but accessible way. Most of that stuff is boring to me, though, like boring postrock with sorta fucked up beats.

Can we get some descriptions of post-rock other than "boring" on this thread. I get that it's a legitimate response, but it's so subjective that there's no real entry to further discussion. At least say what's boring about it! Lack of emotional intensity? Lack of spontaneity? Rhythms that don't hit hard enough? Lack of strong melodies? Repetition? Derivative? All of the above?

The Anticon connection is interesting, though, in that both were scenes that were critically acclaimed at the time, involved self-conscious "experimentation," and both seem to have ultimately fallen out of favor in critical opinion, for the most part.

Also both viewed as being "the next step," or existing outside of staid/stale traditions.

Yeah it's weird I can't really explain why Tortoise are boring. They just are. But then a lot of post rock is boring, even the best stuff tests my patience. I have to be ready to be bored to listen to it. I'm not even necessarily saying 'boring' is a bad thing either, sometimes music can be great but boring and Tortoise are one of those bands. They're just about inventive enough to be listenable and enjoyable but they don't really 'thrill' or throw curveballs at you. It's strange because an album like Standards is actually very varied but at their best they do a cool thing within a track and that's the cool thing but it never makes you go 'woah!'

I never liked Tortoise, or really any of thrill jockey's lineup but I'm not sure why. I was really into soul/funk and house music when TNT first came out and I tried to get into them, I even bought all of their side projects and back catalog, but I ended up selling it all soon after. It's not even that it was boring, I can't put my finger on why it never resonated with me, because I liked the idea of it all. I especially hated the Sea & Cake, but I do still have Sam Prekop's first solo record and I like playing it occasionally.

Tortoise were a non-boring live band up until about 1996, then they got really dull really quickly. Just lacking energy and spontaneity, I almost fell asleep the last time I bothered going to see them (in 1997).

Yeah, the early Tortoise gigs were pretty exciting, in an ad hoc sort of way. You never knew who was going to be playing what. I remember one Lounge Ax show where they had cobbled together some weird electronic drum set that looked like a bunch of pots and pans nestled in a pile of wires.

I saw them on the Beacons tour and it was very good but, yes, kind of predictable - you really do want these guys to embrace improvisation a little more. Or at least dare to reinterpret some of their songs for the live setting.

That said, "Djed" STILL killed, all these years later. It was by far the highlight.

Didn't really connect with this back in 2004, but I've played it a couple of times in the last three weeks since the thread revive, and it's a really good record. Strange how that happens.

I think that's the case with both this one and Beacons. They aren't albums that really blow you away immediately. They continue down the path started with Standards, so they don't feel very novel, but they are just absolutely solid and lack weak tracks.

always thought the first 4 tracks of this would have made an all-time great EP. the rest is nice but doesn't touch those.

Was this record proto-seapunk?

blast 'crest' at high volume while driving through a city at night and you feel like you're in some dystopian sci-fi movie or something

probably my favorite tortoise track, that one