Tortoise
TNT (1998)
Thrill Jockey
By Josh Bayer
For the Daily

Slow and steady wins the race. So it goes in the wide world of indie post-rock. In a music scene action-packed with balls-to-the-wall bands such as The Mars Volta and Battles, Tortoise sets itself apart from the flock by conjuring heady, atmospheric music that refuses to lay all its cards on the table.

Among a discography rife with mystique, TNT is easily the jewel in this enigmatic band’s crown. The album both vies for intimacy and defies full comprehension. It’s one of those records that’s marinated head-to-toe in an intangible, inarticulable bouillon that can only be described as the band’s personality. Tortoise is a master of its craft, spinning melt-in-your-mouth tufts of sonic cotton candy. Noises are made on this record that, frankly, don’t even sound like they were created by humans (or instruments, for that matter).

Case in point: “Swung From the Gutters.” After two minutes of paranoid, brooding kraut-rock, Tortoise uncorks a bottle containing all the unrefined joys of top-notch, ear-boggling post-production. Backwards drum loops trip over themselves, mutant synthesizers rumble and chopped-up bursts of treated guitars swarm. Listening to this song on headphones is a real treat. This is a rare album in which it’s easier to describe what sort of wild images the music is evoking than to actually pinpoint the various instruments being played. Without having seen the band live, it’s nearly impossible to penetrate TNT’s viscous outer layer of mystery.

Not only does Tortoise cook up exceptionally visceral noises, they also layer these noises in dense, melodically unified arrangements, building surreal soundscapes out of seemingly disparate sounds. “Ten-Day Interval” begins with a twittering synth loop that sounds like it’s underwater. Fairy tale bells soon chime in, then a cascading xylophone joins the jamboree, filling the empty space. All the while, a barely audible shimmering drone of white noise hovers low in the mix, adding texture (Tortoise’s “white” noise is never white, it’s always swirled with color). And this is only the first minute. Pensive piano chords, jazzy guitars, a time-signature-confounding shaker (and more) progressively stack on top of each other right on cue, demonstrating Tortoise’s uncanny knack for timing and controlled chaos.

Tortoise makes progressive rock that’s genuinely progressive, both in its sheer absurdity and the fact that the songs all progress in a similar (yet markedly distinct) fashion comparable to “Interval.” This is music that is mobile and dynamic, evolving with each listen.

The band’s robust rhythm section prevents all this acoustic audaciousness from collapsing in a black hole of abstraction. Rhythm spouts forth from unlikely sources throughout the album, from the ticking clocks and syncopated spectral gasps of “Almost Always Is Nearly Enough” to the glitch-damaged maniacal laugh loop in the middle of “The Equator.” Tortoise finds ingeniously colorful ways to keep the beat.

The band’s expansive sonic vocabulary allows for an astonishing amount of song-to-song diversity. This is music that will take you places. Each track is so richly constructed that it requires almost an active effort on the listener’s part not to let it stimulate the imagination. At the start of “I Set My Face to the Hillside,” the band juxtaposes the eclectic noises of children at play, spaghetti Western guitar and what sounds like the low buzz of a sawmill. During moments like this, Tortoise achieves a sound that is virtually cinematic in scope.

TNT is an escapist album in all senses of the word. It offers a cathartic escape into the subconscious and escapes the generic shackles that hold back so many other bands.