Tortoise et Basic

The first time I saw legendary Chicago act Tortoise was at their spiritual home of All Tomorrow’s Parties. I couldn’t believe my eyes at the men gathered up there on stage: David Pajo of Slint, genius producer John McEntire, Eleventh Dream Day’s Doug McCombs, brilliant jazz player Jeff Parker....I could go on. The music on the band’s run of three untouchable albums – Millions Now Living Will Never Die, TNT and Standards – seemed so studio-anchored and complex that I thought it would be impossible to recreate those sounds for a live show. And indeed, as the band began the show it sounded too perfect: everything sounded as clean and crisp and layered as it did on record, a perfect mix of post-rock, jazz and electronics. Then it hit me: these guys are just total pros. I called them legends for goodness’ sake, they’re showing why and I doubted them? More fool me. So as the feedback-drenched national anthem wrangling of ‘Seneca’ gave way to its treated drums and tricky time signatures, and the cut and paste ‘Djed’ was somehow recreated by analogue instruments (I was sure that had been created on a computer) and the band continued to roll effortlessly through their catalogue I gave up wondering how this was happening and just enjoyed this singular experience. Being in the presence of legends is quite something: biblical-proportion doubts surround you before the veil is removed and you realise that some people are just amazing at what they do. That’s Tortoise.