Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisite four-and-half star Ambience, February 20, 2005
Where their debut had been a mixed and largely unstructured collection of leftfield soundscapes, followed by Millions Now Living's surprising love-letter to Krautrock, the third Tortoise release, the all instrumental TNT, was almost a lounge album - but lounge for thinkers. You certainly couldn't call this a rock album, any more than you could call it techno, acoustic, ambient or jazz, but Tortoise take all of those styles and more, building fabulously fat beds of bottom end, overlaid with gorgeous multi-layered guitars, vibes and sampled found sounds, and emerge with one of the last decade's most endlessly satisfying releases.
With it's frantic, sampled drum pattern, `Jetty' could almost be trip-hop, (in fact trip-hop is the lasting after-image of the album), `Swung From The Gutters' has a vague jazz structure to it, at the same time throwing in backward tape effects, `I Set My Face To The Hillside' combines - almost unbelievably - both Spaghetti Western and oriental themes¼ and so it goes, constantly bewildering, constantly enchanting. And then there's the divine beauty of the title track... (sigh)
And it gets better with every listen.
Kim Porter
Forté Magazine, Australia
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Possibly the greatest instrumental album ever., May 23, 2000
The third full-length demonstration of Tortoise's brilliant musical evolution, this disc has me a little worried that they'll be unable to ever record a worthy follow-up. This album can rightfully be called a masterpiece, and is best received in one contemplative listen from start to finish. John McIntire is not only an accomplished drummer, but also a stunning producer and multi-instrumentalist who weaves a cohesive album from seemingly disparate elements. There's brilliant avant-jazz in "Swung From The Gutters"; check out the enigmatic but gorgeous spaghetti-western strains of "I Set My Face To The Hillside". You'll hear amazingly organic electronica in "Jetty", "The Equator" and the epic "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ & Beethoven There Were Women & Men", and hypnotic ambient in "Four Day Interval" and "Ten Day Interval". Chicago jazz VIP Jeff Parker stands out with beautiful guitar work on tracks such as "TNT", "Jetty", and (my favorite) "The Suspension Bridge At Iguazu Falls". By the time the last shimmering notes of "Everglade" signal the close of this lush album, you'll take a deep breath and press play again. P.S. You may think that studio trickery and electronic sequencing are responsible for the many sonically revolutionary moments on this album - until you have the priveledge of hearing this virtuosic collective play live and pull it off perfectly.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A near oxymoron: Ambient-Rock, April 23, 2003
Tortoise's third album, TNT, is a step forward from their previous outings in the most literal sense. One of the premiere innovators of Chicago's burgeoning post-rock community, Tortoise continues to push the technological boundaries of the genre by incorporating a host of obscure electronic instruments in addition to a traditional rock lineup. Elongating their Pink Floydian drones and expanding upon their vision of Sonic Youth turned krautrock, Tortoise mutates their improvisational, instrumental noodlings into fully fleshed out, captivating soundscapes akin to Can or Kraftwerk. This dominance of ambience over edginess on TNT is really the key to its success. By removing the band's choppy rhythms and more obvious rock leanings once and for all, TNT is a point of evolution for Tortoise which brings them beyond the realm of experimental rock in order to arrive at a plateau that is far more indebted to the worlds of film music and progressive rock. Because of this, TNT is perhaps more of a background album than past Tortoise ventures, a listen which relies far more on a consistent vibe than individual songs, but despite the pointed lack of hooks or seeming inaccessibility of the CD, TNT reveals itself to be an album which operates on many levels. An entrancing experience if listened to with rapt attention with eyes closed or if simply played over the car stereo while cruising down the highway, TNT is ambient music that vastly exceeds the constraints of background noise. In a sense, TNT is the evolution of rock into realms often thought to be out of the genre's grasp as much as it is a grounding of heady ambient ideals, that actually expose a surprising number of more straightforward influences. TNT is background music for the classic rock fan and rock music for the ambient connoisseur, because while it is often associated with the vague category of "post-rock," TNT is a far more diverse collage than its nametag implies.
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