This week I listened to Millions Now Living Will Never Die by Tortoise. I chose to listen to this album as I had read about it in a Bandcamp Daily article about bands that influenced American Football. I was a little hesitant going into this, as this is considered a seminal post-rock album and I haven't exactly gotten along perfectly with post-rock in the past. I was very pleasantly surprised when I found an album that had a lot sonic links to some of my favorite 70s German bands like Kraftwerk and Neu! All the minimalism and repetitive nature of some of the songs very much remind me of those bands. The first half of "Djed" showcases this really well, but the whole album has these characteristics. Even with this, the album still finds a way for each song to sound unique, which makes it very interesting to listen to. A song like "Glass Museum", an indie rock-esque track which certainly echos what American Football would later do, sounds very different from the droning "A Survey" (Sidenote: This song gives me "Halwa" by Cluster vibes) yet they still have that sense of minimalism that connects them. These tracks are right next to each other as well, so even though there is this extreme contrast, Tortoise still finds a way to make them fit sonically. A big part of this album is the texture of the instrumentals, with a lot of synths and percussion instruments thrown in (the latter being appreciated as I am a percussionist myself) to serve in adding atmosphere and texture to songs. The album also just sounds beautiful, with the compositions benefiting very much from the very clean production. All these textural elements of the songs are heard crystal clear. 9/10 album
No comments:
Post a Comment