THE VIDEO FOR 'PREPARE YOUR COFFIN' HAS MADE IT'S DEBUT ON PITCHFORK. CLICK HERE TO WATCH.
Directed by Andrew Paynter + JUICE. Cinematography by Dan Wolfe.
NEW TORTOISE MUSIC PREMIERED TODAY!
Two Mp3s from the upcoming Beacons of Ancestorship record were premiered today, Prepare Your Coffin on Pitchfork, and High Class Slim Came Floatin' In on Stereogum. Also check the tour page for new tour dates. Beacons of Ancestorship is out June 22/23, 2009.
TORTOISE RELEASE BEACONS OF ANCESTORSHIP JUNE 23RD
ON THRILL JOCKEY. FIRST FULL-LENGTH OF NEW MATERIAL IN
FIVE YEARS. PRE-ORDER CD OR LP NOW!
The great majority of artists spend their formative years, if not their entire careers, working to shake off the gravitational pull of their predecessors, and the many masters and masterpieces that came before them. Rare indeed is the artist who outgrows their early influences, and instead become one of the markers by which other groups are measured. Almost alone among bands of the last two decades, Tortoise is a group that resists easy metaphors and analogies, who can be described as sounding like only themselves and no one else. Twenty years after its founding, the band's signature and singularly inimitable sound-a fluid intersection of dub, dance, jazz, techno, rock, and classical minimalism, with no part overwhelming or dominating the whole-remains an American and international original. Even more unusually, they seem to have arrived at their sound with almost no apprenticeship to speak of; to judge from their early singles and albums alone, they seem to have come into being with their musical identity and DNA fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. Further, while the group has spawned countless imitators, heirs, and followers-sincere, flattering, and otherwise-Tortoise remains unique in the world of contemporary music for their boundless intellectual curiosity, their unmistakable compositional voice, and their synthesis of seemingly contradictory sound worlds far from their doorstep.
Beacons of Ancestorship is Tortoise's sixth full-length album, and their first release of new material in five years, since 2004's It's All Around You. In the interim, the group also released and toured behind the 2006 career retrospective box set A Lazarus Taxon, and an album of covers with vocalist Will Oldham by the likes of Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Thompson, and The Minutemen, entitled The Brave and the Bold. Additionally, the individual members have kept busy with various other projects, including but not limited to Exploding Star Orchestra, Bumps, Fflashlights, and Powerhouse Sound. |
