Customer Reviews

Millions Now Living Will Never Die

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I agree with the other reviewers who said "Djed" is a phenomenal, life-changing track. It starts out with roughly 10 minutes or so of a droning bass-riff accompanied by gentle electronic effects and atmospheric guitar, very Neu!-ish (or for people who are unfamiliar with Neu!, very early Stereolab-ish.)It then goes into an electronic organ and guitar duet that is accompanied unexpectedly by vibraphones that continue a pretty, rolling melody until they crash and disentigrate into cosmic ambience, and it continues through several more sections until finnaly giving way to the next track. Very nice, indeed...
....the other tracks are much shorter and to the point, but are equally indiscernable from each other..."Glass Museum" and "Along The Banks Of Rivers" are great guitar-driven mini-epics where one can see the influence on bands like Do Make Say Think and Godspeed. The latter is a spaghetti western influenced pondering that could've been the more strait-forward precursor to what Godspeed would do on F#A#, although much less emphasis on the whole ambience thing. "A Survey" is a bass-driven creeper that reminds you that member(s?) of Slint make up this band. "The Taut and Tame" is an avante-jazz-metal heavy song remeniscent of John Zorn and Mr.Bungle (albeit more emotional). "Dear Grandma and Grandpa" is a nice, little psych-dub electro-excursion that leads into "Banks of..." All in all, you don't have to be a musical guru to appreciate this. An open mind, or should I say a stoner's mind, will probably do just fine.

From the very beginning to the very end, this record keeps the ear entertained despite it is repetitive and very cold music. The synthesis of ambient, minimalism, jazz, electronic and avantgarde-rock is perfect, since the music flows quite naturally. The opener "Djed" is a perfect development of krautrock through new technology and some minimalism, and one of the key pieces of nineties' music. The five other pieces are not so complex and coherent, but still offer a bunch of influences tied together in a very personal style and an uniquely cool sound.

A great cd to start with if you have never heard Tortoise before. A excellent addition if you have. From the beginning to the end, Tortoise takes you through many moods. You can't help but be amazed at the talent from these five guys. If you like Tortoise check out June of 44, The Sea & Cake, Dianogah, or the Reach the Rock soundtrack.

I've had TNT for awhile now, and I love that album. I wanted to get this album because of djed. This album is shorter than TNT, but I think its better that way. If your a fan of Can, Faust, Neu, or Tangerine dream, you'll want to get this album. If your a fan of post-rock, you'll want to get this album. I don't know what kind of music the negative reviewers listen to. But if you love music that dares to be different,music that comes from the underground, from the indie scene, from people who also love music, you will want to check out this cd.

This album took me by surprise when I first heard it; I couldn't figure out what to make of it's varied jazz and electronic tinted soundscapes, but it took very little time for me to get hooked. Djed is one of the best and most important songs of the decade, and Dear Grandma and Grandpa is as good as a song can possibly get. Listen for yourself on real audio and I'm sure you'll agree. This album is not for everyone-only for the open minded and musically adventurous. Buy it and love it.

If one wants to know how prog and jazz fusion changed to assume a 90s still then they just need to listen to this fascinating double CD! A group from Chicago that starts from the premise of cold, atmospheric sound and departs to the point of improvisation and the stretching of their original musical ideas. The scenes evoked by this wonderful set of "program music" include (in my most sober mind) camp fires in the middle of pasture at night with fireflies bugging the night-glowed campers. Happy happy mystical joy! Ice space and the sudden interruption of a rail road in the distant distance. (The video for one of this record's tracks featured a very homey looking home video of icecles forming on trees in the middle of a mostly barren field and the formation is speeded up to show the process via elapsed time photography like, man man man . . . this album and its music is just too cool, it forces one to renew that term, steal it back from the little brats who use it now to describe their silly video games or whatever garbage they be into now. `Cause this album is jost so smooth and delicious and COOL to be ignored without superlatives. BUY IT BY ALL MEANS mlost especially if you are an alumnus of the Happy the Man/Kit Watkins school of spaciouis, lightly improvised sound textures.
Served up best, again, COLD. TORTOISE-SICLE . . . delish

For those interested in Tortoise I highly recommend this album. That said I recommend it based on the first track, Djed, which I think is one of the finest songs (or soundscapes) of the decade: It is a masterpiece. As peculiar as this sounds, the first time I heard Djed in 1996 I found it as liberating as punk, of course in a very different, cerebral way. It still sounds great today, filling me with anticipation of its multiple changes every time I play it. As for the rest of the cd, it's mostly very fine background music.

I own this album on vinyl and it's just about going through it's final days, simply becose of overuse. I'we listened to it so often that sometimes it hasn't left my record player for weeks. This is to me a combination of Pink Floyd, Philip Glass and a little bit of autechre if I can be so bold. Go now, don't walk, RUN! and buy this before the world as we know it comes to an end.

Easily one of favorites of the 90's. Djed, of course everyone loves Djed it's such a journey, it's kind of an album itself. Glass Museum is so beautiful, do look up the video on youtube. This is the only Tortoise album to feature genius guitarist David Pajo. It's their best IMO.

The song glass museum is my favorite song on here...it has a nice, relaxing, and beautiful overall sound to it-very nice guitar rifts on it. The first song DJed is an instrumental medley. The first part of the medley with the heavy bass and the shaking sound I like quite a bit and maybe another part of the medley. The last song on the album is an ok song too. But thumbs down for the other three tracks. I find that on too many tortoise songs it will have a sound you start to like or enjoy and its quickly destroyed with another sound coming out of nowhere that is just lousy and does not blend at all with the previous sound. It's almost as if the band members all have their own agendas of how the song shall be played and are not in agreement or in unison of how it shall be played.