Discography Countdown | Tortoise
#1 - TNT (1998)
The absolute pinnacle of Tortoise and one of the most definitive alternative records ever released.
The band's final project with Slint guitarist David Pajo, and first with jazz guitarist Jeff Parker, TNT is arranged and produced from a background across genres. From contemporary classical to jazz, from rock to techno and dub, TNT is by far the band's most versatile project.
Continuing the "instrumental narrative" stylings heard on their previous record Millions Living Now Will Never Die (1996), each track speaks without verbosity. Production is central; John McEntire situates TNT's thoughtful and balanced mastering with all the flair of Tim Gane and Brian Eno on their most playful arrangements. Sweeping high end textures and supportive analog percussion on tracks like "Swung From The Gutters", "The Equator", "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men", and "The Suspension Bridge at Iguazu Falls" reinforce the swirling and spatially complexity in the album's instrumentation. Not to mention, the more electronically experimental tracks present on the record, with versatility in an almost attenuated IDM-style fusion track with "Almost Always Is Nearly Enough" into the titular "Jetty" extending the album's Afro-Cuban influences across into the electronic end of the arrangement.
As many of Tortoise's projects do, the album invents a discernable space, and its sonic shapes traipse within it and beyond it.
The instrumentation continues to iterate on forms from their sophomore album Millions Living Now Will Never Die. Especially noticeable on "I Set My Face to the Hillside" with its bittersweet harmonica and string lead over a complex supporting tonal structure, and "Ten-Day Interval" with its dominant mallet progression, accented by sonorous interlayered piano stabs. The band also makes its first undeniable march into krautrock:
The sweetly climactic brass from Rob Mazurek and Sarah Smith on the album's title track, into "Swung From the Gutters", featuring borderline industrial sound design straight out of Steve Reich's Different Trains (1988); both tracks with a supporting a progressive jazz structure headlined by Parker and Pajo.
The final track, "Everglade", could slot right into an NEU! or Eno record with its loose tempo structure and subtle synth support for Pajo and Parker's mutli-guitar harmonization which the track is built around.
TNT is one of the most thoughtfully built sonic artworks I have ever experienced, and I highly recommend a deep listen for anyone inclined. Boundless and meditative, TNT is #1 in Tortoise's discography countdown- and is easily one of the greatest alternative records ever constructed.