Interview

Tortoise experiments with Sound

By Morgan Keep
Music Editor

Traditionally, rock has been about revolution: fast, three-minute songs bursting out of your speakers, rocketing up the charts and changing everything in an instant. But in keeping with its name, Chicago quintet Tortoise is all about evolution rather than revolution. In fact, this tortoise-like nature seems to permeate everything the band does, and in person Tortoise bassist Doug McCombs is as laid-back and contemplative as his music.
McCombs explains that "The way any Tortoise song starts is that one person in the group will have an idea that might not even be really formed at all--a beat, a rhythm or a little piece of a melody that he wants to try and do something with. We start with any element of the musical spectrum and we try and just build on really simple things."
As evidenced on the group's latest album, Tortoise does manage to build from these simple foundations and create pieces of stunning power and complexity. Millions Now Living Will Never Die, the much anticipated follow-up to Tortoise's self-titled 1994 debut proves that evolution does have a place in rock music. The album opens with the 20-minute masterpiece "Djed," which takes the listener on a sprawling journey through several distinct regions of sound while managing to remain a cohesive whole.
"Djed started as four separate ideas," McCombs explained. "You know, it's entirely possible that any one of those single ideas could have developed into a song on its own... and there's still a chance that they might." According to McCombs, Tortoise took "Djed" as a challenge to see if the group could create such a long piece that would remain interesting. The result was a definite success, for while "Djed" may be long, there is never a dull moment.
After laying the song's skeleton down on tape, the band built on top of it, creating segues to connect the separate sections together. But this wasn't always easy, and there was one section in particular that gave Tortoise trouble. About 14 minutes into "Djed," the album's most captivating moment occurs, when the music seems to disintegrate, as if the master tape was crumbling apart, and a new beat is revealed underneath the original surface.
"We were having trouble figuring out how to make that section segue," McCombs said. "Consequently (drummer/keyboardist/producer) John (McEntire) was cutting up a lot of tape trying to make it fit together, and when he got frustrated, he finally just stuck together many different pieces of tape and the result was the two different sections of the song flip-flopping back and forth on each other arbitrarily and for different amounts of time."
This spirit of studio experimentation as well as the band's emphasis on drums and bass suggest that Tortoise is the descendant of studio wizards like Lee Perry or King Tubby. This dub influence also manifests itself in the several remix records that Tortoise has released. McCombs explained, "The remixes seemed like a natural progression of what we do. Dub and dance culture were things that we thought applied to our work even though we don't necessarily consider what we do to be dance music. The idea of the remix just seems appropriate for what Tortoise does because we don't ever consider our recordings to be the final versions of any of our songs."
Nowhere is this more evident than in Tortoise's live show, where the band uses "Djed" as a sort of outer structure for the show, weaving the other songs in and out of the transitions of "Djed." Drawing from influences like John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Tortoise tries to treat live performance as a realm that is entirely separate from the studio. "But we just don't feel comfortable enough with our musicianship to improvise as much as people like Coltrane and Davis did," McCombs said. "That's something we'd like to incorporate, especially into our live performances, where it occurs more anyway. We're trying to make the live performance go beyond our recorded work but, out of necessity, I think our live performances are actually too close to the recordings."
Despite McCombs' modesty regarding Tortoise's live performances, the band's shows are an incredible experience. The band members constantly change instruments; there are always at least two, and sometimes three, bassists at once, and occasionally two members will play drums simultaneously. The most visually exciting moment of Tortoise's show occurs during "Djed" when two members switch to vibes and xylophone. The incessant rhythmic hammering of the vibes is powerful on record, but seeing the instruments played live is downright mesmerizing. Tortoise is able to begin with a simple bass line, building shifting polyrhythmic tension on top of the framework until the audience is driven into a frenzy.
The show is wall-to-wall sound, for when the music stops, the spaces are filled with strange samples and lo-fi tape recordings. After sound check, the members of Tortoise seemed preoccupied with a desire to find the nearest guitar shop, presumably to look at guitars. But that night, the tape recordings that started and stopped between songs revealed recorded conversations about guitar necks and pickups. Whether the band went to Guitar Center to look at instruments or just to make field recordings is still a mystery.
In fact, much about Tortoise seems to be shrouded in mystery due to the low-key nature of the band members. Their vocal-less, on-stage-patter-free show brings the music to the forefront, leaving typical rock egoism and posturing behind. In fact, for all of punk's barrier-breaking presumptions, Tortoise does much more to bring the audience and music together than any punk band ever did.
Despite the near-anonymous demeanor of the band members, Tortoise seems to get an unlimited amount of attention from the press and the indie rock community at large. This summer the band arrived in Denton, Texas, (one of the many stops on its North American tour) and was surprised to find that it was headlining a "Space Rock" festival, during which Tortoise had an impromptu jam with Spectrum/E.A.R mastermind Sonic Boom. And it seems that not a month can go by without the band being mentioned in some music publication.
But this press attention often leads Tortoise's funk- and dub-infused brand of rock to be associated with such labels as "fusion" and "krautrock." Some even venture to call Tortoise prog-revivalists. McCombs points out that Tortoise isn't so self-conscious about its influences. "I don't think we necessarily go out searching for new styles to exploit," McCombs said. "It's more a result of what we listen to." And to those who still hold on to the misconception that all fusion is bad and that all prog-rock is overindulgent, McCombs reminds that "The positive elements from the past withstand the test of time. There are certain things that were taboo throughout the `80s with the rise of independent rock. But over time, the good things from that period will rise to the surface and be appreciated, while the bad elements will be forgotten."
It is this openness to all forms of music that has allowed Tortoise to create a unique sound. By drawing on influences that others had ignored, Tortoise has been able to pioneer its own indie rock niche, with many new bands following its lead. "I don't think it's a coincidence necessarily that there are more and more people who are playing music that is outside of the confines of rock music while still incorporating it," McCombs said. "I think it's just the right time for that to happen."