Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996)

Maybe something about turtles? I don't know. I just know that this album has a somewhat pretentious title which shouldn't mean much, it just makes me less than optimistic. Then again I'm about to listen to music by an artist I'm unfamiliar with, so I shouldn't feel much optimism in any case.

The opening track "Djed" has a slow droning fade in with lots of crunchy sound effects leading to a light rock instrumental passage that reminds me of NEU! and Faust. I'd be interested to see if this would be labeled krautrock, because before I questioned whether krautrock was really a genre, but if I can now so easily recognize it I'd have to change my mind. In any case, "Djed" just goes on and on with its understated lack of melody and endless digital sound effects. At the half way mark the song changes from being a largely drums and keyboard fare into a largely vibraphone & xylophone driven affair. The change isn't abrupt, which makes me wonder why it wasn't just made a different song. Eventually this passage literally breaks down as if the reel were burning. "Djed" spends a few moments farting through a sequence of scratchy sci-fi noises before eventually giving up after 21 minutes.

"Glass Museum" is a nice little haunting instrumental. It got way more done in 5:33 than "Djed" could in 21 minutes. I feel the same about the 3-minute "A Survey", and the first minute of "The Taut and Tame" is quite promising. Makes me wonder what the fuck the point was of making "Djed" 21 minutes long. It could have easily been broken up into 4 or 5 separate songs, none of which would have been very interesting, but at least wouldn't feel like nearly a half an hour of wasted time.

The later songs on Millions Now Living Will Never Die contain a certain depressing ethereal jazziness to them, if that even makes sense. Could it be that I'm actually listening to my second example of post-rock? Checking... Yes! Tortoise, who up until now I thought was just one dude, is actually considered one of the ground-breaking bands of post-rock. I still don't really understand the term, but since I eventually recognized it, kinda, I guess it's a genre. A pretty boring and dreary one, but it's definitely there.

I can go two ways on this one. I kinda hated "Djed" but then there was some stuff on side 2 that was kinda good. Still when I see a song take up half an album I almost feel like the other songs were just filler to support the "main event" so to speak. Should I judge Millions Now Living Will Never Die based largely on the one overwrought piece of awfulness? I guess not. Even still I'm not sure I even kinda liked what I heard. 2 stars.