Fresh off of yesterday’s news that they’ll be headlining the newly-birthed WA music festival, ‘This Is Nowhere’, post-rock pioneers Tortoise have announced they’ll be extending their Perth visit into a nation-wide tour.
The Chicago instrumental five-pieceare heading to Australia in October to play their astonishing amalgamation of rock, dub, dance, jazz, techno and minimalism in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and finishing at the ‘This Is Nowhere’ Festival in Perth.
With two decades experience and six critically acclaimed studio albums under their belt, the band’s signature and singularly inimitable sound remains an American and international original. Since their self-titled debut release in 1994, Tortoise have shown impeccable compositional skill by alluding to their influences without subscribing to the confines of a particular genre, a trap that many musicians of a similar ilk fall into.
Between 1996’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die and 2001’s Standards, Tortoise’s position as one of the biggest influences in 90s post-rock was confirmed, as well as a solid reputation of swimming much faster down the instrumental stream than their contemporaries. Combining a multitude of synths with double drummers, seam-splitting bass lines, polished guitar melodies and everyone playing a little of everything, Tortoise created an exciting and innovative sound somewhere between Can, Minutemen and Miles Davis.
Tortoise kept themselves busy writing several more studio albums; a collaboration with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, scoring the soundtrack for a film; curating an ATP and of course, plenty of live shows. Their last album, Beacons of Ancestorship nods to techno, punk, electro, lo-fi noise, cut-up beats, heavily processed synths, and mournful dirges. It included the eight-minute composition ‘High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In’, which playfully references the world of ecstatic rave and dance culture with robotic melodies that stop and start in several different time signatures and the uptempo math-rock tune, ‘Yinxianghechengqi’, which steadily accelerates into a wall of fuzzy atonal sqwonk.
Be sure not to miss these Chicago instrumentalists on their upcoming national tour
TORTOISE AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2012 DATES
Thursday October 11 – Hi Fi Bar, Sydney NSW
Friday October 12 – The Zoo, Brisbane QLD
Saturday October 13 – The Corner, Melbourne VIC
with very special guests Grails (USA)
Sunday October 14 – This Is Nowhere Festival, UWA, Perth WA
