Tortoise

The instrumental Chicago band Tortoise didn't set out to create a genre, or a scene; it just happened to the band after the fact. Its debut is an experiment in low-end theory -- emphasis on the theory. Almost all basses, drums, marimbas, and mixology (this last courtesy of drummer John McEntire), it doesn't have much in the way of tunes, but it's got some splendidly throbbing textures and tricks, like the two-bass pas de deux "Tin Cans & Twine." A canny journalist decided that they (and a few other bands with whom they'd never worked) were "postrock," and a genre was born -- and it didn't hurt that the members of Tortoise were also involved in half a dozen other sort-of-likeminded bands.

With Millions Now Living Will Never Die, the band proved itself worthy of the hype. McEntire, in par-ticular, took advantage of the studio's capability for making live instruments do impossible things. "Djed" is the first masterpiece of modern digital editing, a 20-minute epic in which a little melodic figure and a drone-based background perpetually shift their forms. "Dear Grandma and Grandpa" hints at European techno; "Along the Banks of Rivers" brings new guitarist David Pajo (formerly of Slint) out front, with a beefy melody that twangs like Duane Eddy. Remixed collects a series of transformations of Millions pieces by the likes of Jim O'Rourke and Oval's Markus Popp; the best is probably U.N.K.L.E.'s remix of "Djed," which nods to Steve Reich's minimalist classic "Come Out."

TNT is something of a wet firecracker: The pitty-pat beats, sparse textures, mellow-electric-jazz in-flections, failed techno experiments, and general retreading of ideas the first two albums did better mostly add up to second-rate fusion. Fortunately, Standards is a return to form. The jazz gestures are largely absent, replaced by a throw-it-all-into-the-pot attitude they share with Stereolab, a few of whose albums McEntire has coproduced. There's even a slab of space funk, "Monica." McEntire's drum tones are like no others in the world -- they sound like they're made of liquid and alien bones rather than metal and plastic -- and he's started to open up his ultraprecise tone-doctoring to messier sounds. It's All Around You is even more studio-intensive and micromanaged -- the model seems to be Miles Davis' early-'70s tape-and-funk experiments. It's definitely not the sound of six musicians in a room: Instruments flutter around the stereo field, change their timbre mid-note, materialize and evaporate with no notice. Artifice is the point, and if even the album's "spontaneous" bursts of noise seem artificial, that's the price they pay. Still, there are some nicely constructed themes beneath all the trickery. (DOUGLAS WOLK)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide