Tortoise : Touch
Tortoise released their self-titled debut album in summer 1994, just months after Simon Reynolds first used the term “post-rock” in reference to the unconventional textures and techniques Bark Psychosis employed on their album Hex. And though Tortoise didn’t then sound anything like that British group, nor have they since, the tag stuck for similar reasons—the group, though ostensibly connected to the broader Chicago indie rock scene via its members’ various other projects such as Bastro and Eleventh Dream Day, didn’t play rock. They instead crafted a uniquely malleable fusion of dub, ambient, jazz and electronic sounds with a significant influence from film soundtracks from the likes of Ennio Morricone. “Post-rock” stuck in part because no better term existed for the kind of forward-thinking fusion at the time, and perhaps still doesn’t, but more significantly it suggested that Tortoise had tapped into the future.
Three decades after the release of their debut, Tortoise’s signature sound isn’t emblematic of a broader genre so much as a personal trademark. “Oganesson,” the first single from Touch, the band’s first new album since 2016’s The Catastrophist, is immediately recognizable as the group’s own distinctive fusion: a 7/4 groove beneath a hypnotic blend of sparse guitar chords and twinkling atmosphere, mellifluous and mysterious, captivating and cool. Ironic, then, that the leadoff track on Touch sounds like nothing so much as well, actual rock music, chugging along on a mid-tempo rhythm and distorted palm-mute guitar. But it’s never really that simple, and in due time, “Vexations” is awash in baritone twang and fluttery electronics. Ah, there it is—the Tortoise we know, strangely comforting even in their elusiveness.
Touch arrives after nearly a decade-long break, which saw the members of the group spread out in different cities and various different projects, John McEntire creating ambient techno with Sam Prekop, John Herndon collaborating with Helado Negro and Church Chords, and Jeff Parker building on his ample body of stellar jazz records. It arrives via International Anthem, the Chicago-based label that Parker has partnered with since 2016’s The New Breed, which after a decades-long tenure on Thrill Jockey would seem to symbolize a new chapter for the group. But the most dramatic reveal on Touch is one of conciseness and immediacy, compressing the band’s far-ranging flights of fancy into some of their most compact compositions to date.
As the throbbing synthesizers and reverberating bell tones of “Layered Presence” can attest, Touch retains a similar textural and tonal palette as past Tortoise albums, but reassembled and reconfigured in fascinating ways. “Promenade a deux” arrives at exotica via minimal wave synths, only to transition halfway through into a more lush and romantic vision of paradise. “Axial Seamount” is a pulsing krautrock jam, more Neu!-jazz than nu-jazz, dialing up its tempo as it progresses. And the synth-pop pulse of “Elka” hews closer to actual dance music—not just IDM—than the band’s ever been before, providing a dose of instant gratification that’s oddly satisfying given how eager it seems to be just that.
There’s nary a moment on Touch that resembles the side-long sound collage of 1996’s “DJed” or even the elongated runway and slow-motion takeoff of 1998’s “TNT.” Given that those already exist, however, it feels more radical on Tortoise’s part to turn their focus to fragmentary synth-punk buzz on “Rated OG” or the gorgeous exercise in tension in “A Title Comes.” Even the most epic piece of the bunch, the dense and dramatic closer “Night Gang,” doesn’t run a second over five minutes. They sound a little more impulsive here, a little rawer, a little less bound by any specific expectation and instead prone to simply follow a groove or make themselves at home with a harder-driving rhythm. It sounds more than anything like they’re simply having fun playing music together again after a decade, and that feeling is infectious.
Label: International Anthem/Nonesuch
Year: 2025
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Tortoise : Touch
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