| | Tortoise It's All Around You CD Tortoise Discography of CDs
 (3 Customer Reviews)
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In the second half of the 1990s, Chicago's Tortoise embodied the forward-looking, genre-bending, usually instrumental style that came to be known as post-rock. They've been refining their approach ever since, and IT'S ALL AROUND YOU offers an extremely concise version of the almost-indefinable Tortoise sound. Many of the familiar sonic signposts are here--the jazzy vibes, the polyrhythmic drum patterns, and the Morricone-influenced, heavy-reverb guitar. The overdubbed layers of vocals on "The Lithium Stiffs" are a new development, marking the first time anyone in the band has opened his mouth while the tape was rolling, but, overall, the album's blend of funk grooves, colorful electronics, and jazz-rock harmonies will feel warmly familiar to longtime fans.
Perhaps most notable is the fact that Tortoise seems to have honed its compositional chops to their finest point to date, making the melodies and structures of the pieces some of the most fully realized in the group's repertoire. At this point, the band is like a 21st-century equivalent to late-period Weather Report; they've already defined a new combination of jazz, rock, and electronics, and are strutting their stuff as the kings of their stylistic castle.
Recorded at Soma Electronic Music Studios, Chicago, Illinois.
Personnel: Kelly Hogan (vocals).
Audio Mixer: John McEntire.
Recording information: SOMA Electronic Music Studios, Chicago, IL.
Tortoise: Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, Jeff Parker.
Additional personnel: Kelly Hogan (vocals).
Rolling Stone (p.70) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Percussionists John McEntire and Dan Bitney lock into percolating, jazzy grooves with bassist Doug McCombs, and keyboardist John Herndon and guitarist Jeff Parker lay down single-note lines that bristle with angularity."
Spin (pp.107-9) - "[Parker's] controlled playing, a lean thrum of pocket-lint noise, is a valued commodity in Chicago's avant-jazz underground; on IT'S ALL AROUND YOU, it gives Tortoise their 22nd-century jam-band edge." - Grade: B
Entertainment Weekly (4/16/04, p.78) - "Subdued, layered rhythms leap from indie-jazz lightness to manic psychedelia, often in the same song..." - Rating: B+
CMJ (4/04, p.46) - "[L]ush and intricate..."
Mojo (Publisher) (4/04, p.108) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[T]he sound of a band sticking to its guns....That means rich, miscellaneous percussion from Dan Bitney and Johns McEntire and Herndon, Jeff Parker's always-inventive jazz-meets-surf guitar twang and Doug McCombs's ocean bed-trawling bass." It's All Around You Music Tortoise It's All Around You Songs | 1. | It's All Around You |
| 2. | Lithium Shifts, The |
| 3. | Crest |
| 4. | Stretch (You Are All Right) |
| 5. | Unknown |
| 6. | Dot/Eyes |
| 7. | On the Chin |
| 8. | By Dawn |
| 9. | Five Too Many |
| 10. | Salt the Skies |
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It's All Around You Music Review Average Rating: (4 out of 5 stars)   Cautious recommendation
I read about this album in Keyboard magazine, and checked out the sound samples on CDUniverse which got me excited to hear the rest. It's nearly all instrumental except for a few vocal sounds on the second track, but the style of the songs (if you want to call them "songs") is very... DIFFERENT. It's not quite jazz, it's not quite ambient... lots of nice vibraphone, but overall, the album didn't really "send" me. The sound samples of their earlier work didn't excite me like the ones for this album did, so I'll probably stop here. Gorgeous cover artwork, though! :)
Submitted by markz (Plano, TX, USA) 
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music that grows on you
it's very hard to rely on sound samples, in my humble opinion, to determine a basis on buying a cd or not. i say this because before i purchased this album from tortoise, i subsequently bought 'millions now living will never die' and 'TNT'. a reviewer said that the sound samples from these former albums didn't capture their interest, which i could comply with. however, the two aforementioned albums are ones that i favor over 'it's all around you'. their relaxed, ambiently jazz-y unorthodox melodies really grow on you throughout the album, and picking any 30 second spot to try to descriminate an opinion on would be absurd; it's an entity that must be viewed as a whole to respect. i say that i like these two albums better because 'it's all around you' hasn't yet grown on me... but i'm sure it will. tortoise's odd-structured beats and music landscapes take a little familiarity before you can truly appreciate them.
anyways, i anticipated more electronics to be used in 'it's all around you', considering it's relatively new recording date, and i was right. the electronics compliment the plucked bass, guitar and coffee-shop drums. the overall feel of the album was much more fast-paced, reaching a crescendo over the album... a different kind of tortoise, but equally as pleasing.
overall, all three of the albums i've had by them display different qualities, each one of them different in their nature.. but they all retain a very soothing, serene quality, almost like you're taking a vacation from your life's normal paradigm. this is worth the money, and if you give it a few listens i can garauntee you won't be dissapointed. i give it four stars because i prefer the swooshing, nostalgic melodies of 'TNT' and 'Millions now living will never die' more.
Submitted by cantheasswonder (Eau Claire, WI, USA)
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tortoise astound me every time i slap em into my player.... good stuff.... unconventional song structure and beat-wise ambience float around on this album. it starts off really strong and continually picks up speed untill the entire albumn crecendoes into a lunar collapse of noisy beauty. its almost exactly like carelessly rolling down a desert highway at midnight... beautiful stuff
Submitted by argyle (Nashville)
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