Are Tortoise feeling their age? Beacons of Ancestorship, their sixth album and first album proper in five years, is littered with references to age. Ancestorship is a reasonable pointer, with Tortoise being the ancestors of course. And the title “Prepare Your Coffin” is pretty explicit. Not that Tortoise are letting it show musically. Beacons of Ancestorship kicks out into a noisy fuzz-fest at points. It was introduced to me as being synth heavy, which is right on the money. Tortoise have augmented their sound with a fat bank of analogue synths and begun to explore the territories of electronica. The result is an odd eclectic album, at points noisy and reassuringly angular, then at others well … er … funky. Never really thought I’d be saying that about a Tortoise album. But it works for me.
It sounds like Tortoise aren’t really sure which direction they want to go in, but have made a pleasingly eclectic album out of the indecision. This makes Beacons of Ancestorship quite an accessible album, for Tortoise. Funk that funks and rock that rocks. Tortoise still have a very spiky angular feel even while they are doing their take on four to the floor funk. Its not the funk of total epilepsy, but there is still the odd twitch on the dance floor. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Accompanying Beacons of Ancestorship is the release of a couple of quality remixes. Eye from the Japanese noise/psychedelic heroes Boredoms remixes “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In”. He ups the drums into the kind of cascading rhythms you’d hope for. Initially his mix is a nice wash of psychedelic synth and guitar, which would sit rather well alongside the latest Boredoms EP Super Roots 10. Tortoise’s recent adoption of synths really pushes the sound in this direction. Then Eye lets the sound break apart into a stuttered garbled chant and the rhythm emerges as a full on charge before the intensity dissipates into washes of white noise.
Mark Ernestus, half of Berlin dub techno act Basic Channel, provides the second mix. He strips “Gigantes” down into a streamlined minimal form. His mix, unsurprisingly, isn’t as intense as Eye’s. He keeps Gigantes nice and dubby with a constant complex drum and bass beat going throughout. Both mixes pushes Tortoise’s new sound into new directions, if that makes sense, making the EP a great addition to Beacons Of Ancestorship.
-AP-
