Interviewed winter 1995 at Het Patronaat in Haarlem.

The streets of Haarlem were covered with ice and muddy snow. The night before it had snowed for the first time in 1995. In front of the venue (”Het Patronaat”) stood the enormous tourbus of Tortoise, The Sea and Cake and 11th Dream Day. Just enough room for three bands on tour together. But 11th Dream Day had remained home, the child of the singer and the guitarist had become very ill. The tour had only just started and the first concert in London was already a big success. A lot of prominent musicians of the English experimental musicscene had come to watch the band in the small and crowded venue. Among them were Bruce Gilbert (ex-Wire), Richard D. James (The Aphex Twin), Stereolab and Debbie Googe (My Bloody Valentine). If people like that are coming to see an unknown band like this, you can be sure it’s one of the most interesting bands of the moment.

But if you listen to the music that becomes even more evident. The first single, “Lonesome sound” appeared early 1994 and sounded reasonably contemporary. Songstructures and lyrics, it sounded a lot like Slint. The second “Mosquito”, was very different, instrumentals with South American rhythms. But the eponymous debut album was the true surprise. No songstructures and almost all of it instrumental. “The music we play is very much influenced by the music we all listen to,” tells John McEntire, “everybody puts a bit of their influences in it. It’s a filtering process. The people in this band all have such different backgrounds musically. That in the end the music doesn’t sound like any other.” The core of Tortoise consists of a fixed group of people, who all play in bands from Chicago and Louisville. John McEntire (drums, vibraphone, melodica and keyboard), has played in Bastro and now also drums for The Sea and Cake. Douglas McComb (bass), plays with 11th Dream Day. John Herdon (drums, vibraphone), has played with the Poster Children as well as The Mekons. Dan Bitney (percussion), plays with Tar Babies. Bundy K. Brown temporarily left the band because he detests playing live. His replacement is Dave Pajo, also known as the guitarist of Slint and The Palace Brothers during the first album. He has teamed up with Brian McMahan again in a band called “The For Carnation”.

Although all the members play in other bands, they don’t see Tortoise as a ’side-project’. John Herdon: “If you use that term, you assume that you have one project that you’re really serious about. While you just fool around with this other project. We’re serious about everything we do. It’s something that is completely accepted in the Jazz community. People play with different people all the time. That way you can learn a great deal.” John McEntire: “Our line-up isn’t really fixed either. At any moment people can play with us, or add things to Tortoise.” John Herdon: “On Stereolab’s Duophonic label we’re about to release a ten inch, on which there’s a track we recorded with about eightteen people.” The way Tortoise play live also has a lot in common with Jazz. “We try to do something different every concert we play.” tells Douglas McComb, “But we haven’t been on tour long enough to expand that and try and improvise more. At this moment we just try to be comfortable with the songs. Just adding a little something now and then.”

In the studio Tortoise works in a similar way. Douglas: “For the album we locked ourselves in the studio a week long. We stayed there every day, with just about five hours sleep. And then we would come back into the studio to work on things.” John McEntire: “Most of the tracks we had prepared before we went in. But on the record there are about three things we created in the studio. The kind of layered ones, looped pieces of music we kept cutting and turning around. And in that we completely changed the composition.” After a month they came back to mix the whole thing. And so there was this magical debut.

What can we expect of Tortoise in 1995? Well, at this moment the first (Why we fight/Whitewater) of two singles on the English ‘Soul Static Sounds’ label is out. The ten inch on the Duophonic label will be released in March. Tortoise will also release another album with remixes of most of the tracks, which are done by members of Tortoise and friends. John McEntire: “We gave everyone the freedom to do what they liked. More than fifty percent of the tracks on that record don’t have any resemblance to the original.”

At the end I present Tortoise with a list of records with which I associate the album:

Talk Talk: “Spirit of Eden” & “Laughing Stock”
Orang: “Herd of Instinct”
Ø: “Metri”
Aphex Twin: “Selected Ambient Works II”
Slint: “Spiderland”
Bruce Gilbert: “This way to the shivering man”
Bedhead: “What fun life was”
Shiva Affect: “Yahweh”
Bark Psychosis: “Hex”
Main: “Motion Pool”
Laika: “Silver apples of the moon”
Artificial Intelligence (WARP)
Ostzonensuppenwurfelmachenkrebs
Gastr del Sol

They acknowledge most of the names on the list, although they haven’t heard of Bark Psychosis or Ø. At my request they make me a list of tips:

Keith Hudson: “Pick a Dub”
Xenakis: “Electro Acoustic music”
Stockhausen: “Hymnen”
Morton Subotnik: “Silver Apples of the moon”
Tod Dockstader: “Quartermass”
Robert Ashley: “Private Parts/Private lives”
Dom: “Edge of time”
This Heat (everything is absolutely essential)
African Head Charge: “My life in a hole in the ground”
African Head Charge: “In search of Sanshame land”
King Tubby: “Rockers meets King Tubby in a fire house”
King Tubby: “meets Lee Scratch Perry”
Edikanfo: “African Super Band”
Tito Puente: (Anything from 1945-1995, best: 1947-1954)
Fela: “Zombie, Original Sufferhead”
Brian Eno + David Byrne: “My life in a bush of ghosts”
James Brown: “Funky people part 2″

anything by Luigi Nono, Luc Ferrari, Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer, Scott Walker, Alvin Lucier, Franco Battiato, King Tubby, On-U Sound, Traditional music of Burundi, Morocco

As you see a lot of music to check out..