Tortoise
SETTING A NEW STANDARD
Post-Rock Innovators Tortoise Up the Ante on Rock's Progression
With influences ranging from American minimalism to Düsseldorf electronica and well beyond, Chicago's all-instrumental Tortoise are one of the most eclectic and influential outfits on today's rock scene. In fact, the quintet are often cited as prime instigators of "post-rock," a term used to describe the recent crop of bands broadening the boundaries of rock as we know it. Standards, their fourth album, is their tightest combination of top-flight musicianship and studio-savvy sonic manipulation to date. But what sets Tortoise apart from most bands is their open attitude toward collaboration: As a unit, they've recorded with Dutch art-punk collective the Ex and toured behind mad Brazilian genius Tom Zé (one of the architects of Tropicalia). Most of the members have significant side projects as well, from Dan Bitney, John Herndon, and Jeff Parker's fusion-oriented Isotope 217 to Doug McCombs's ambient-twangy Brokeback. Nominal leader John McEntire is the busiest of all: Beyond his multi-instrumental duties with Tortoise, he plays with Eleventh Dream Day (also with McCombs) and the Sea and Cake, as well as being an in-demand producer and remixer, working with artists as disparate as Blur, the High Llamas, and Richard Buckner. Barnes & Noble.com's Franklin Bruno caught up with the seemingly inexhaustible McEntire one morning before a session -- in his recently completed Soma Studios -- with longtime associates Stereolab.
Barnes & Noble.com: People don't think of Tortoise as a band that's involved in politics, but one way of taking the title Standards and the cover [a collage of the American flag by artist Peter Girardi] is as some sort of comment on America. Does that kind of symbolism have anything to do with the music on this record?
John McEntire: Maybe, but only in a kind of abstract way. You're right, we're not necessarily interested in making explicit commentary about things, but we obviously have our personal viewpoints, and maybe the artwork and the whole presentation is sort of mild leak of that kind of stuff.
B&N.com: It took me a while to find the song titles in your cryptic liner notes. What was the thinking behind that?
JM: I'm surprised you didn't see them -- they're not blaring out at you, but they're there. It was just a desire to deal with the text in a way that was a little bit different, and diminish the importance of titles. They're pretty much non-titles. As for the rest -- it's poetry.
B&N.com: You're in at least three bands, and everyone else in Tortoise has several other projects as well. Do you all set aside time to primarily "be" Tortoise in the studio?
JM: We all work together, but it takes a while -- it took about five weeks to make the record, spread out over four or five months. Everything goes in kind of cycles, when we were making the record, that was a time when everyone wasn't touring much and everyone was around anyway.
B&N.com: Was the working method on this record any different than in the past?
JM: The way that we write has been pretty consistent over the years. It's a pretty slow process for us, and often it has to take place in the studio just because we need that kind of feedback -- recording something, listening back to it, and not necessarily using that piece. So, I'd say it took five weeks, but if you got down to it, half of that was writing. As for recording, it's only different in terms of what's available on the technical side of things, and what we're interested in pursuing at the moment.
B&N.com: So what were you pursuing this time around?
JM: It's hard to say because we don't have some kind of agenda we're trying to follow when we start working. That becomes a bit more clear as it develops. We did have this desire to keep everything fairly direct and concise, and to maintain a high level of intensity throughout the tracks. Speaking in the vaguest possible terms, if there was a direction at all, that what we evolved into.
B&N.com: I hear that the studio you've been building is right next door to [famed Chicago musicians' bar] The Rainbow. What have you found out about having somewhere to hang out so close to the studio?
JM: I find that I never go out anymore -- I'm at one place or the other 16 hours a day, every day. Dan [Bitney] doesn't bartend there anymore, but John [Herndon] does, and so does Bettina [Richards] from our label, Thrill Jockey.
B&N.com: Most of Tortoise play on the new Aluminum Group record, Pelo, and you're listed as coproducer. What was your role in that record?
JM: I just mixed that; John Herndon did all the recording and programming, so he had more of a hand in shaping the overall feel of the material. But that was a fun project for me because Frank and John [Navin] are great writers and singers, and the fact that they're open to bringing other people in was really exciting. It just felt like a good, open session with all these different contributions. It represented a good cross section of people that were working here in Chicago at the time.
B&N.com: There aren't any credits on the most recent Red Krayola record, Blues, Hollers and Hellos, but I hear your hand. How heavily involved were you with that?
JM: Mayo [Thompson] basically handed me the tapes and said, "Finish this." I think he was getting frustrated with it, and that's fine. I had the guitar and vocals parts, and put the rest together based on what he gave me. The rhythm tracks almost always end up coming later on Red Krayola records, which is why they sound so weird.
B&N.com: Do you think bands that you collaborate with have specific ideas of what they want you to bring to the table?
JM: It's hard to say. With someone like Stereolab, it's a completely different dynamic because that's been such a long working relationship -- this is the fourth record of theirs I've produced -- so there are expectations that are pretty developed. In other cases, I'm not so sure, at least in any kind of explicit way.
B&N.com: I also wanted to ask about working with Tom Zé. What did you get out of touring together?
JM: Above all, I think it was a lot of fun and enlightening for everybody. The guy's 64 years old, and he's got more energy than almost anybody I know. He was just great in rehearsals, very patient but very focused about what he wanted from everybody. It was a role that we had never been in as a group; basically being a backup band was really interesting for us. We're not on his new record, but the parts of it I've heard are great. I don't know if Luaka Bop is putting it out here, but in Brazil it's on a label called Trauma, which is the best label going down there.
B&N.com: And finally -- what have you been listening to lately, either old or new?
JM: I haven't been listening to much of anything -- like I said, I don't leave the studio much when I'm not on tour. Mostly, I've been listening to this new Stereolab record a lot. But I hear what Tim [Gane of Stereolab] is into, and he's been on a modern classical kick lately. So we've been listening to little bits of [Iannis] Xenakis and [György] Ligeti in the studio. And the Carpenters.
February 20, 2001
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