Tortoise Beacons Bonus Track “Ice Ice Gravy” – Why Waste Time? Import Information

Yesterday Thrill Jockey announced that they are making the Tortoise track “Ice Ice Gravy” available for download for $1.00 from Fina– their online download service. To date, “Ice Ice Gravy” was only available in the U.S. as part of the iTunes version of Beacons of Ancestorship. Outside the U.S. it is available as a bonus track on the Japanese pressing of Beacons of Ancestorship as well as what appears to be a Japanese tour EP release in May titled Why Waste Time?

According to Dan Bitney in this interview with popmatters.com he track “Ice Ice Gravy” is a 13-minute pastiche of some improvisational work Tortoise did to get  inspiration while starting the recordings for what would become Beacons. From the interview at popmatters:

“It was more like experimenting,” he explains, “And we really didn’t get anything out of it. We were doing a lot of improv, just kind of set up a roomful of stuff. It wasn’t focused at all. We weren’t necessarily bringing in song ideas, we were just doing what I would describe as improv experiments. So we started out doing something like that and then we’d say, ‘Oh gee, what the hell are we doing? Is this going to work?’”

According to the article, some of these sessions are in “Ice Ice Gravy.” Ultimately, these sessions were scrapped in favor of the songs that would become Beacons. But, don’t dismiss “Ice Ice Gravy” as a mere toss-away track. It is an interesting view into the creative process that Tortoise works to make their albums.

While I was looking for the interview with Bitney where he talked about “Ice Ice Gravy” I stumbled upon a new Tortoise release titled Why Waste Time?! This is a Japan-only EP released on Commmons Records, which is a label started by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Judging by the little bit of English on the website it appears that Commmons has a relationship with Thrill Jockey to do the Japanese releases of their catalog.

Why Waste Time? contributes the cover art to the download of “Ice Ice Gravy” shown above and is a pretty cool release as it has three tracks not on the U.S. Beacons release (including “Ice Ice Gravy”), one of the Remixes from the recent Beacons Remixes 12″ and has some video content as well! Here is the tracklist:

1. Ruba’iyat
2. Passerine
3. Gigantes Version – Mark Ernestus
4. Ice Ice Gravy

CD Extra Video Content:

1. Charteroak Foundation (Live in Japan, 2009)
2. Seneca (Live in Japan, 2009)
3. Prepare Your Coffin (Music Video)

Updated! Thrill Jockey is carrying the CD for Why Waste Time? for $17! Click Here to order.

Click Here to listen to and purchase “Ice Ice Gravy” for $1.00.
Click Here to see the Why Waste Time? page at Commmons

Tortoise Returns to Morning Becomes Eclectic Make Appearance at Amoeba Records

Tortoise is in L.A. and they are busy. They play a sold out show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, but they are doing a couple promotional appearances ahead of the show.  Yesterday Tortoise returned to the KCRW show “Morning Becomes Eclectic” to perform a 43 minute set and interview. The show included three songs from Beacons of Ancestorship, but also included two earlier songs that I haven’t heard on tour in a while!

Tortoise kicked things off with “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In” followed by “Prepare Your Coffin” from Beacons, and then did “The Suspension Bridge At Iguazú Falls” from T.N.T. and “Djed” from Millions Now Living Will Never Die. The band wrapped things up with “Minors” from Beacons, which was unfortunately cut short. The interview with the band mostly surrounded how the band works together collaboratively on their music, which was cool.

Today (July 9th) Tortoise makes an in-store appearance at the Hollywood Amoeba Music location, which they will stream from their website. The show should start at 6PM Pacific Time (8 PM Central, 9 PM Eastern, etc.). Tortoise is also featured on Amoeba’s “Music We Like – Handpicked Titles for $10.98 or less” sale.

Click Here for the Amoeba.com information on the Tortoise In-Store Live Stream (At this point the stream has been taken down, but there are pictures from the session).

Click Here to visit Tortoise’s Website

Click Here for Tortoise’s 2006 appearance on Morning Becomes Eclectic

Tortoise Announce Fall Dates in Support of Beacons of Ancestorship

Tortoise
Tortoise’s Beacons of Ancestorship— their sixth official studio album– arrives in stores and online on Tuesday, June 23rd.  The release was available online for pre-order as CD, LP and mp3 and a special set of packages of the CD and LP release that included a folded poster of Beacons and a very limited brass belt buckle with the “TRTS” logo with the eye that was used on the hoodies. Apparently the buckles were only available to the first 75 preorders. The LP’s– which are 180g virgin vinyl which was mastered by Ray Janos at Stirling Sound— are sold out online, but thre should be copies available at your favorite indie record stores. It sounds like there will be a future re-repressing, too. At this moment there are still some CD+buckle packages left on the site.  See the “artist’s rendering” below. I’m going to need to run to WalMart and get a belt with the snaps so I can rock this thing!

The Tortoise touring machine is getting ready to jam econo in support of the new album. They’ve been playing some sporadic shows already and are hitting some festivals, but the fall tour is already starting to shape up with some Midwestern dates starting in September and October.

Notably (for me anyway) Iowa is getting its first tour date in a very long time. The show is going to take place at the very cool Voices Warehouse Gallery in Dubuque, IA. It has a similar artsy space feel as CSPS in Cedar Rapids.  I saw Bo Ramsey there in October of 2006. I called Tim McNamara who handles setting the shows up and there will be more information coming soon about tickets and the possibility of other opening acts. 10/3 ends up being the end of the season for the gallery and last year they had a number of acts playing. I’ll post an upcoming show article when I get more details.

Tortoise Tour Dates:
Sat. July 11 — Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
Mon. July 13 — San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
Wed. July 15 — Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
Fri. July 17 — Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival
Sun. July 19 — Washington, DC @ Black Cat
Mon. July 20 — Philadelphia, PA @ Sanctuary at First Unitarian Church
Tue. July 21 — New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
Fri. July 24 — Tokyo, Japan @ Fuji Rock Festival
Fri. Aug. 14 — St. Malo, France @ La Route Du Rock
Sat. Aug. 22 — Hasselt, Belgium @ Pukkelpop
Tue. Sep. 29 — St. Louis, MO @ Firebird
Wed. Sep. 30 — Kansas City, MO @ Beaumont Club
Thu. Oct. 1 — Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room
Fri. Oct. 2 — Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
Sat. Oct. 3 — Dubuque, IA @ Voices Warehouse Gallery

Other articles at playbsides.com about Tortoise

Get Your Tortoise On… Beacons of Ancestorship is coming

Tortoise - Photo by Jim Newberry

Tortoise - Photo by Jim Newberry

As previously mentioned, Chicago Post Rock stalwarts Tortoise’s first new album since 2004’s It’s All Around You will be released on June 23rd on Thrill Jockey. Titled Beacons of Ancestorship, it is, in my opinion certainly very distinctively Tortoise but compared to Around You, it seems to be more straightforward and pared back from some of the layered sound of that effort.

Thrill Jockey has started the promotion of Beacons early by allowing blogs to host a couple of mp3’s for download. The entire album is currently streaming from the Tortoise website on a splash page as well. I recommend you give it a listen!

If all of that weren’t enough, there is a video for “Prepare Your Coffin” that seems rather Tortoise-like. Matching the high-tempo (for Tortoise, anyway) pace of the song we see a guy running around taking interesting pictures of architecture that seem to echo the cover art for the album.

Click Here to visit the Beacons of Ancestorship album page at Thrill Jockey which is where you will be able to pre-order the album (no date, yet).

Click Here to download “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In”

Click Here to download “Prepare Your Coffin”

Click Here to visit the trts.com page with the stream of Beacons of Ancestorship

Click Here to visit Tortoise’s MySpace page

Watch the video for “Prepare Your Coffin”

Tortoise – Prepare Your Coffin from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

New Tortoise Album Beacons of Ancestorship Details

Contrary to the information that Pitchfork announced about an April release date in their Guide to 2009 releases listing April 21st for it, Tortoise’s new album titled Beacons of Ancestorship will be released on June 23rd! This was announced today in the Thrill Jockey forums as well as twitter.

Beacons of Ancestorship is taking Thrill 210 as its catalog number between Lithops Ye Viols! and Mountains Choral, is Tortoise’s first solo studio release since 2004’s It’s All Around You (excluding the compendium A Lazarus Taxon, and the album The Brave and the Bold which was a covers album done with Bonnie Prince Billy). Recent criticism of Tortoise is that they’ve been touring the same set since they introduced the It’s All Around You songs, and really haven’t been digging much further back in their catalog than T.N.T. Since the Thrill Jockey 15th Anniversary shows in December of 2007, Tortoise has been giving  new songs a workout on the road. Looking at the tracklist below, however, only “Prepare Your Coffin” is a recognizable title out of the working titles which included “Glowstick” and “Korg.” I guess we’ll see which of these tracks gained new titles on the record.

The release predictably will come out on CD and a limited pressing of vinyl, but according to this Pitchfork (who gets all the sweet scoops from Thrill Jockey!) there will be a series of  limited edition 5″ records following the release featuring new music!

Tracklist for Beacons of Ancestorship

01 High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In
02 Prepare Your Coffin
03 Northern Something
04 Gigantes
05 Penumbra
06 Yinxianghechengqi
07 The Fall Of Seven Diamonds Plus One
08 Minors
09 Monument Six One Thousand
10 de Chelly
11 Charteroak Foundation