Starting out with roots firmly planted in punk, Tortoise flipped their dogmatism over and began fiddling with every musical genre they could find. In 1993 they put out several singles and a full length that began to earn them an intense underground following. Will Never Die , Tortoise proved they were masters in successful experimentation, seeping guitar rock deep into sampling and jungle. I've been trying to decipher the title, Standards , and the Jasper Johns-ish American flag on the cover and can only conclude that perhaps it's ironic. Still, Tortoise remain the best defense against the dance music snob's argument that guitar music is dead.
Standards is disarmingly stunning and instantaneously consuming.
Tortoise are unquestionably skilled artisans, electrocuting the framework for the typical rock song and reconstructing the fragments into a wonderfully surrealist space mission soundtrack. Standards travels with lucent agility through powerful, rhythmic grooves, bubbling vibes, malleable metallic guitar melodies, duelling harpsichords and New Wave, coked-out synths. Focused shots of Latin music, jazz, and jungle are superimposed upon its lushly textured framework. The songs stretch and bend and build into a brilliantly cemented cohesiveness that seems impossible, considering the vast musical landscape that Tortoise conquer. The images conveyed are dark and dreamy, possessing an alluring calm and futuristic essence.