Tortoise

Bio

Tortoise was born in 1990 in one of the most important musical workshops in the United States: Chicago. It is composed – in its most recent line-up – by Dan Bitney, Doug McCombs, Jeff Parker, John Herndon, and John McEntire,and it’s one of the stand-out bands of the post-rock movement born in the Nineties. It introduced a rock sound contaminated by numerous influences like jazz and electronic music.

The band’s first album, Tortoise (1994), generated attention and appreciation by both the public and the critics also thanks to the successful and innovative fusion of various styles and genres in unique, distinctive sound. Two years later, after a ten-day retreat in Vermont, the band published Millions Now Living Will Never Die, which saw the entrance of guitarist David Pajo in the band’s line-up. This second artistic effort was probably the band’s most successful record and became one of the symbols of the post-rock genre.

The time span that goes from the end of the Nineties and the beginning of the 2000s was a period of great experimentation forthe band. In 1998, Tortoise published TNT, a discographic effort with deep jazz and blues influences, while 2001 was the turn of the exploration of electronic-tending sounds that was summarized in their fourth album, Standards, followed by It’s All Around You in 2004

After five years since their last publication, Beacons of Ancestorship was released, a record that put another genre, dance music, under the spotlight. The addition of this genre in the musical influences of the band could have been a project too ambitious but, like Pitchfork asserted, «This choice seems to come naturally to Tortoise, and their mastery of the genre explains the large consensus obtained by the record.».

In 2016, after six years of absence, the band published The Catastrophist, a brilliant record made of energetic and suggestive sounds in which stands out Tortoise’s ability to navigate various genres without losing their musical balance. The same year, the band arrived in Italy to present the album in five of the most important Italian cities: Bologna (Locomotiv Club), Rome (Monk Club), Milan (Circolo Magnolia), Turin (Cap 10100), and Brescia (Latteria Molloy).

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