Millions Now Living Will Never Die

Дуже люблю цей гурт, а Millions Now Living Will Never Die є на вінілі в мене. Такого пост-рока треба більше, не тупориле псевдодраматичне тремоло, а вигадлива, технічна інструментальна музика з прекрасною атмосферою.

In a sense, post-rock went where prog never could, i.e., besides the best of Floyd or King Crimson, the progers were too early to the party of strange & experimental notions. Tho 'rock' was still a possibility at the time Tortoise emerged, following the lessons of Talk Talk, the group understood that it could all now be reengineered. In reality, this record has next to nothing to do w/ rock, being more of a conflation of techno, jazz, and European forms, and really only the ideas of those genres. Even when the electric guitar is the most predominant instrument, I think of Sun Ra more than Jimi Hendrix. And yet, tho I respect and enjoy this more than records by ELP or Rush, it ultimately suffers from the same defects: it's boring, it's dead, it's snooty.

Millions Now Living Will Never Die by Tortoise was completely new to me and unfortunately, not in a good way. I went in open-minded, but the album quickly became a slog.

What’s often praised as experimental and forward-thinking landed here as pointless. Rather than drawing me in, the album felt like a test of endurance, with tracks that just did nothing for me at all. There’s no moment that stood out enough to redeem the listen, and by the end I was relieved it was over.

Favourite track: None – I struggled to find anything enjoyable.
Least favourite track: Every track felt equally tedious.
Album artwork: Ironically, the highlight. A genuinely cool and appealing cover

Tense dissonance, a thrumming ambience suggesting something's off, expressive and restrained guitars that are at once vaguely punk and darkly jazzy, meditative and absorbing but disquieting.

Yet another random noise album. Felt all over the place. Reminded me of Death Cab instrumentals. Unclear why it's here, had some nice moments though, 3*

This is quite interesting, I don't know why I was expecting yet another indie album. However as interesting as this is, I am not so huge on post-rock despite obvious influence of this band. A lot of ideas here but feels kind of loose. Probably right in the middle for this one.

Surprisingly pleasant instrumental group. I let this album run on into the next release on Spotify by accident. I felt this one was fine but I think TNT actually agreed more with me.

Moody and experimental. The tracks do seem to drag on a bit.

first half is banging. id rather be listening to bcnr tho. 3.5

I dug this pretty well, and I think it's got room to grow on me. "Djed" has a bit of a NEU! thing going on that I appreciate, and I really didn't mind the length at all (that's what she said). "Glass Museum" and "The Taut and Tame" also stood out to me on first listen. It tailed off a bit for me in the final two tracks, but I'm interested to revisit this one and see if I can sink my teeth into it even more.

3.5/5

Man, add some lyrics in here and maybe you'll have something. As it, it's fine.

Wikipedia says this is a “post-rock” band. I don’t know what that means but I do know that I kind of love it. I don’t know when I would think to seek it out, but this was a good listen.

Also Spotify went directly into a Mogwai tune after this album which led me into listening to one of their albums. Very similar and also gorgeous!

uai?????? esse eu nao esperava.

de fato, o tnt é melhor hein. mas esse num fica atras não!! bem bonitão atmosférico do jeito que post-rock tem que ser. lindo demais!!

I saw Tortoise live in a warehouse in Dubuque, Iowa, in maybe 2010, which was awesome. They had some synth I’ve never seen before or since that was played like a marimba.

This was ok. I guess the fact that it sounds like pretty much all the other Post Rock music I've heard makes sense as this pretty much defined the genre. In terms of significance, I suppose that makes this album very significant. In terms of listenability, I could listen to it again in the right mood though I think the first track could have cut out much of the last 5ish minutes. 3/5

This has been on my "to listen" list for a while now, and I'm glad this made me get around to it. Tortoise are an instrumental post rock group, featuring members of a variety of bands, covering a lot of ground (most notably to me, David Pajo of Slint is here). In short, this is fantastic, Millions Now Living Will Never Die is a particularly engaging post rock album with sort of indie sensibilities. And they play in a very particular palette, with traditional rock instruments, as well as vibraphones, marimbas, more bass guitars than can be typically expected, and all sort of interesting electronics. A lot is incorporated, and the result is honestly kind of otherworldly, there is some psych, space rock, ambient, glitch, and even a little hip hop influence here and there. In an awfully bold move, the first song here is Djed, a sprawling, 20 minute long epic. It has a really interesting way of progressing, where glitches tear the instrumental swells apart, and abstract synth drones serve as the rhythmic center of new swells. It is a remarkably brisk, engaging 20 minutes with some really intense and beautiful moments. And the rest of this album is no afterthought. Glass Museum is ethereal and gorgeous, The Taut And Tame taps into some really abstract, driving rhythms, and Along The Banks of Rivers taps into something intense, and western-esque: all are incredible tracks. The two shorter tracks here are also pretty great, not the showpieces that everything else is, but still great. On an instrumental album like this, it makes sense that these littler tracks would still be detailed and engaging. For what it is, this is pretty much perfect, I loved it from start to end, and intend to put it in my regular rotation.

Solid

For art to be worth seeing, something must happen, or it must be beautiful. An action movie has something happen, but isn't beautiful. Alice Munro's stories are beautiful, but nothing happens. Rzewski's variations on Pueblo Unido are beautiful and have things occur in it. This album fulfills neither requirement. Fortunately, it doesn't sound actively bad and thus it gets a 2.

The first track is enthralling for being such a long song, although that may be due to its hyperactive nature, being more like four or five songs in one. Then the second track is even better, instantly blasting you away only to tease you with that high for the rest of the song, and it leaves you itching for what else this album can come up with for its shorter tracks. It proceeds to, unfortunately, kind of lose me after that. The album was atmospheric and mellow background music before the drop-off, but it still felt like any moment I could tune in and find something great, but after the second track Tortoise lean into the background music nature of it all, and it becomes something more similar to acts like NEU! or Boards of Canada. Luckily, the final track ends us off on a haunting, devastating spaghetti western of a track that fills me with so much cinematic despair. It's a great closer and perhaps my favorite on the album, but the more ambient tone that takes up about ten minutes of the album does a lot of damage for my enjoyment. I think had they committed to that ambient tone more thoroughly, I would be singing a different tune, but as is it leaves me wishing we got more post-rock instrumental wonders, and less Kid A demo backing track.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4.

I wasn’t expecting this to be a fully instrumental album, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – I liked the first 26 minutes and 24 seconds of this album a lot. If this album were just the first two tracks, I’d be at a 5. So, what exactly do the last 16 minutes and 36 seconds do to warrant bumping this down by a point & a half?

Well… nothing, really. That’s a positive & a negative – the last 4 tracks here are fully competent tracks that fit in decently enough with the rest of the album, maintain the mood, and they’re fine enough to listen to. They also do absolutely nothing for their runtimes, and as such, they’re very one-note compared to the bigger journeys present in the soundscapes of the first two tracks. Those first two tracks aren’t perfect, but they kept me on my toes by changing up the soundscape every minute or two, so it was easier to stay engaged with them. The last 4 tracks find their soundscape immediately, and just never really change, so the feeling of a journey is lost. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if they didn’t show they could competently & effectively do it so well on the first two tracks. The only one that comes close to finding that journey is the last track, “Along the Banks of Rivers”, but it’s still fundamentally just a percussive beat, a wall of sound, and some up/down guitar hits that feel like they’re from a SpongeBob track.

I do feel like I’m being just a little unfair towards this – perhaps my overt attention on the first 2 tracks gave me a bad impression for the last 4, since those first 2 just felt more rich to me. I might need to listen to this in a pure zen state, just to see if the last tracks click better, or to see if they are just that “bland” comparatively. Overall, though, I did like this. It’s competently done ambient music with some high highs (great guitar, expressive percussion, fun synth work) and some flat lows (droning one-note walls, a few blatant drum loops, less engaging guitar) that feels sort of like a prototype for what Radiohead would more successfully commercially blend on Kid-A. It’s an inoffensive 43 minutes, and while I can see how that inoffensive style makes it easy to ignore and give a 2 or something, I think it’s at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4 because it really did engage me for those first 2 tracks. If over half the album’s runtime is that good, who am I to bump it all the way down?