THRILL JOCKEY (RR)
mylatency
10,475 Posts
^^I celebrate their catalog. Chitown holds it down. Post yer faves from the label.
TAGGED:
mylatency
10,475 Posts
^^I celebrate their catalog. Chitown holds it down. Post yer faves from the label.
Comments
So damn well produced it's ridicolous. The first bassline in Djed is
Great album. I caught those guys live in the late 90's and I was impressed. They all changed instruments in between songs and killed it. I don't feel them as much as I used to but that album can't be fucked with.
post-rock boredom?
i feel you.
for me, a benchmark of good music is "if given a choice, is there something else I'd rather be listening to?"
tortoise & their cousin groups are ok. tasteful, nothing horrible, but...
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Oh yeah, definitely. I don't pay attention to the current scene and I haven't listened to Tortoise for a long time and some of their new stuff is doodoo, especially this butt ugly thing:
from tortoise too smashing pumpkins too liz phair too steve albini too jim o rourke too wilco the list goes on and on
there must be something i nthe water i nthat town
I was gonna say this, but held my words in fear of a chi-town wordsmith verbal assault - although if the latest reports are to be believed, they have escalated to fisticuffs...
also the lonesome organist was incredible to see live
"Didn't we deserve a look at you the way you really are"
CALIFONE
GIANT SAND/HOWE GELB
Chicago had one of the deepest soul scenes in the United States. The shit is endless, literally endless. And this list looks like it came from Spin magazine. I would be careful before indicting Chicago based on that list. It's all alt-rock radio bullshit. Any city in the world is damnable based on their alt-rock radio bullshit. I can't even name one Toronto band, so I can't demonstrate by example. Rush? Oof. They're probably from Alberta or something though.
i definatly should have been more specific
chicago rock fro mthe 90's to present
can't fuck with that shit
i already revised my dissing to exclude house, so soul gets a pass too...
and yes Rush are from toronto
but our 90's to present scene is atrocious...
Overstatement.
(below featuring the cover of "Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake", mentioned elsewhere)
Some people don't like steel guitar and twang, but it could never be mistaken for the soundtrack to a pseudo-profound lecture.
that's Shellac's worst album IMO.
Anyway yeah Millions Now Living is a great great album, the rest of their stuff kinda bores me though.
Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt this Sunday in Brooklyn. I'm there.
but all that tortoise sea and prekop dream day shit? you can miss me with that.
but i do like califone
To be honest, I was a little nervous about this interview. As a longtime fan of Tortoise's music, I had read several articles alluding to the fact that they aren't the easiest guys to talk to. I get the impression they are pretty weary of attempts to classify their music, or nerd out on their influences. It came as somewhat of a surprise to find Dan Bitney (a founding member, and multi-instrumentalist) totally personable and engaging, as well as happy to answer any question I put to him, even if it happend to be about what they like to listen to.
The Scene: So you guys are in the middle of a tour right now, right?
Dan Bitney: Well, kinda. We had to cancel a couple shows because John [McEntire] sprained his wrist at a skatepark.
S: That's no good. How many of you guys skate?
DB: Just me and Johnny. Some of the other guys can ride around and stuff.
S: That's my style. So I'm guessing you guys won't be hitting any of the San Diego parks when you're out here?
DB: Nah, I think we learned the lesson with that one: keep off the skateboards on tour.
S: Right. What about music on the road, are there things you guys are listing to on the bus?
DB: Nah, everybody's got their IPODS and stuff, so it's not communal like it used to be. Alot of TV mostly, the guys are pretty into that Freaks and Geeks thing. But yeah, somebody gave me that Ethiopiques box set, all this Ethiopian music, I've been playing that a lot.
S: Now for the new record, there weren't any lineup changes in the group, and you guys were recording in a studio [Soma in Chicago] owned by one of the group members. Did that make recording this record more comfortable than some of the others?
DB: Yeah, it was more comfortable. John keeps getting better at the engineering end of it. We worked faster; it was a bit easier to convey what we wanted, and get a certain kind of sound.
S: Was this one more composed, or did you kind of restructure the songs after the recording?
DB: We kind of have three different writing techniques on this record. On something like Dot/Eyes we set up the rhythm, and then did these short improvisations live on top of it. Other songs like Salt the Skies, Jeff had that pretty much composed, so we didn't have to do too much more to it. And the third thing we did was on a song like the title track. We had a melody, and that was it. So we did a lot of recording, and then going back and layering things and playing with the organization and structure. John will sometimes bring in things that he's worked out on the computer too, and then we'll replace some of the synth sounds with live instruments. We did that with the vocals on Lithium Stiffs. He made it with some "female ahh" preset on a sampler, and then we got a singer to come in actually sing those parts.
S: Do you guys sample other musicians' work at all?
DB: We do a little bit, but it's pretty abstract. We generally process it pretty heavily and use it more as a texture than the basis of a track. You can hear some of that at the end of Dot/Eyes. It's kind of the opposite of stealing a loop or something.
S: Do you have any feelings on your own music being sampled? What would your reaction be if you turned on the radio and you heard someone rapping over a Tortoise drum break, or a loop from one of your records?
DB: It kind of depends on who it was, right? If it was someone who's making millions of dollars a year I'd probably want to sue them. But if it was some kid with a boombox rapping over one of our loops I probably give him twenty dollars.
S: As far as you know, has that ever happend; has your music been sampled at all? I know Automator put one of your songs on a mixtape.
DB: Yeah, and even that was cleared. Pretty much anyone at that level knows to get clearance, because no one wants to be the Verve or whatever. I have this DJ friend in the Bronx who's part of this group, Sonic Sum. I think they used something of ours once, but you know, it wasn't like the basis of the song or anything, so if it's something like that, it's pretty cool. I mean, if it were someone like Dre, I guess we'd have to clip him or something [laughs].
S: Get a beef going , right? I remember reading a while ago that you guys might be putting together a breakbeat record: something made for producers or DJs to sample.
DB: Yeah, we worked on that for a little bit, but we had a lot of other things going on at the time, and the work wasn't too fruitful. It was McEntire, Herndon and myself, the drummers from the group. It might still happen, but not anytime too soon.
S: You guys have done some soundtrack stuff for short films, and John did the Reach the Rock soundtrack. As a band would you consider doing the music for a feature film?
DB: Yeah, yeah. The guys are all super into that, either doing new music for movies or having our stuff used. For a while we had this DVD idea to like, reverse the process: to give directors songs and have them make short films around the music. The thing is, it's kind of hard to tell who's good at that kind of thing unless they're already famous. Then it's hard because people don't have time, or are too expensive. We were actually thinking, maybe we could make it a non-profit sort of thing. If we could come up with a cause for the DVD to support, maybe we could get some of these superstar directors, Spike Jonze, Sophia Coppola, to get involved. [laughs].
S: Experimental music and jazz are often associated with mind expanding drugs, do you guys even have time for recreational drug use?
DB: Well, time's not the issue. I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of that going on with the group though. I mean, some of us smoke, there's some dabbling in psychedelics, but I wouldn't really consider it part of the creative process. Whisky though.... [laughs]. Whisky definitely keeps us going on tour.
S: With all the sideprojects you guys are involved in, would you say Tortoise is still the principal focal point for the members?
DB: Well yeah, I mean whether we intended it to or not, Tortoise kind of became what pays the bills. [laughs]
S: The workhorse project?
DB: Yeah, and I feel funny saying that, becuase we wouldn't do it if it were a pain in the ass that paid the bills. But having Tortoise as a steady thing lets us do some of the other stuff. For a lot of the side bands, you don't have to rent a tour bus, or anything, and things like improvisation can work a lot better in front of 70 people than in front of 500. And the other projects keep Tortoise fresh. Having time to do other stuff, it's nice to go back and realize how well it works to play with these guys, how much fun it is to hang out with them.
S: You have historicly produced all of your own records. Is there any interest in seeing what an outside producer's take would be?
DB: Yeah, we've definitely discussed that. We really like that Latin Playboys record, the guys who produced that.
S: That's Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom, right?
DB: Yeah those guys. I really like the guy who does the Flaming Lips records. But at our level, it works better to do the records ourselves. Recording is a relatively small part of our budget, and we'd probably have to tripple what we pay to work with someone like that. We'd also have to change the process a lot; we'd have to be much more organized going into the studio. But I do think that it would be very interesting to try something like that.
S: What's your favorite song you've heard on the radio recently?
DB: Well, radio's kind of weird right now. Chicago has this great history with AM radio, things like Dusties, playing all vintage R& B. I used to love that. The group used to even mess around with their jingle. We could bust out four part harmony for [sings] Dusty radio thirteen ninety [laughs]. But that stuff isn't around anymore. So I don't know, I guess I don't listen to the radio much right now, unless it's like, NPR.
S: Ok, so what's one song you could stand never hearing again?
DB: Well, there's all these ice cream trucks that wake me up in the morning. Yesterday there were two, playing Pop Goes the Weasel and La Cucaracha, so I guess either of those songs. I had visions of running around, firebombing all these ice cream trucks. But then I thought, nah, some kid'll get hurt or something, guess I'd better not [laughs]. Also, my girlfriend has been singing Mambo Italiano all day. I don't ever want to hear that one again.
S: Better hope she doesn't read this interview.
DB: Well, she's right here, now she knows I guess [laughs].
S: Do you think now is a good time to be making music?
DB: Well, it depends. There's always cool things going on, but I also feel like things are pretty stagnant right now. Most things are selfconsiously retro, and there's not a whole lot new happening. But the way I see it, periods like these tend to lead to some cool new innovation, and it generally comes from some unexpected source, someone who doesn't really care.
S: Would you die happy never hearing the term "post-rock" again?
DB: Yeah, yeah, that'd be great [laughs]. But I guess it's not the worst thing in the world. I kind of feel like if you want to be sucessfull, you should be able to describe your sound in a few words. I've probably spent weeks of my life trying to describe what Tortoise sounds like. I'm like, well, we have a vibraphone....
I think it was also on the eleven:eleven record on matador. Anyone know whether the Zedek records on Thrill Jockey are similar? different? interesting? worth pursuing?
Thanks in advance,
JRoot