Monday's Long Song

It is Monday apparently and if it is Monday there must be a long song. This is Tortoise's remix of Yo La Tengo's Autumn Sweater from 1997. 

Autumn Sweater (Remixed By Bundy K. Brown, John Herdon, Douglas McCombs And David Pajo)

In its original Yo La Tengo form Autumn Sweater is a beautiful, organic song with woody drums, organ/ synth and a hushed vocal about the changing of the seasons, a couple slipping away, moments frozen in time, love and longing. Tortoise don't remix the song so much as completely reinterpret it, a languorous seven minute instrumental that defies description. Electronics with live drums, from jazz but not jazz, indie but not indie, not really post- rock but definitely not rock. Not rockist at all. Lovely, understated, a mood as much a piece of music. 

Tortoise released an album at the end of October, Touch, their first since 2016. It's a 2025 joy that I overlooked slightly and have only really grown to appreciate it recently. It's intricate and layered, instruments working out their roles in the space around them- lots of little shifts and changes but all feeling like a unified whole. Cinematic. An album that gives a little more away each time. Find it at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Song

I own two albums by Chicago band Tortoise, their second album Millions Now Living Will Never Die, released in 1996 and containing the still astonishing twenty minute opening track Djed. Millions Now Living... made Tortoise the standard bearers for post- rock, a name/ genre they denied (and having recently got back together still deny- personally I quite liked the idea that as Britpop spluttered out into Richard Ashcroft solo albums and grunge was definitely over and done, that we were in some way post- rock but I can see why bands reject simple pigeonholing labels too and as a label post- rock was off putting, academic and a tad joyless). 

The other Tortoise album I own is a three CD/ 1 DVD box set from 2006 called A Lazarus Taxon, a compilation that rounded up singles, non- album tracks and remixes. There's a lot of music on A Lazarus Taxon and a lot of ground is covered. Tortoise were always as much about groove and texture as songs, and the triple crown of dub, krautrock/ cosmische and experimental electronic music inspired them as much as any guitar bands did- or that's how it seemed. Between them the group were big fans of minimalism, punk, hardcore and jazz as well. 

A Lazarus Taxon's first disc kicks off with Gamera, an eleven minute single from 1995 for the Duophonic label. It begins with an acoustic guitar playing a folky finger picking part, the squeaks of the fingers on the strings clearly audible. There is a hum growing in the background that gradually works its way forward and then at two and a half minutes drums, Can or Neu! like rhythms, the louder buzz of amps being overloaded and a guitar line, and then more sounds, organ maybe, keys/ synths, another guitar. Tortoise sometimes came across in print as a bit too cerebral,  an exercise in musical experimentation. There's none of that in the actual music- Gamera is thrilling and alive, an eleven minute journey that never lets up.

Gamera

Millions Now Living Will Never Die...

...was the title of a Tortoise album back in 1996, which is unbelievably nearly twenty years ago now. Walter mentioned it on Sunday at his blog. The whole album's good but the other songs all have to live in the shadow of the twenty-one minute opener Djed, which takes it's cues from dub, ambient, jazz and kraut and makes something new. Post-rock they called it- always seemed like a silly name to me. Hypnotic and relentless, full of lovely little touches on the organ, music to drift along in, swimming with the tide, even the middle to end section of noises and static and faint pulses. When it's over the only thing to do is play it all the way through again, until you've lost forty minutes of your time, daydreaming.

Djed

My home computer is operating at tortoise speed quite often at the moment. I sometimes think it'd be quicker to write these out on paper and deliver them to your door by hand.