Tuesday 25/07/06 Tortoise @ Koko, London

The bands on tonight are far from the usual din of beer swigging indie wannabes. The fact is, the musicians present have been hand picked by the ATP brainiacs and assembled to form a series of gigs entitled Don’t Look Back. Now in its second year, these gigs showcase what ATP believe to be some of the best albums of late, albums that are well crafted enough to be stand alone works of audio excitement and fascination. Tonight Don’t Look Back focuses on the work of Chicago based rock band Tortoise and their seminal album 'Millions Living Will Never Die' with the title taken from a 1920s Jehovah’s Witnesses book.

However, the fact they are a rock band, at least from the outside is wildly irrelevant: Tortoise’s mystique emanates from their seamless genre hopping, their skilful blending and looping together of sounds to create original music. In this way they visit jazz, post rock and dub, all set within the framework of an electronic music mix but without really being electronic. It is no surprise then that their only support tonight is from Warp records Chris Clark, who in fact would be a Tesco’s finest experimental techno musician should they stock them. In a similar way to Tortoise, Clark effortlessly blends together different loops, samples and beats to create a rich tapestry of sounds. Where he differs is that he relies solely on 2 beat boxes, a synth, a sampler and a mixer, all covered under the shroud of a black sheet.

Tortoise on the other hand throw live instruments into their fusion. When the collective arrive on stage Koko is packed out. They make no introductions and don’t even talk to the crowd until having completed their live interpretation of 'Millions...' first. Later on they dip into other albums 'TNT' and 'Standard' for their encore. There’s not much of a spectacle here, just simple abstract visual projections and the five (+ or – 1) members of Tortoise swapping places within their huge stage set that consists of 2 drum kits, bass, guitar, 2 laptops, glockenspiel, electronic xylophone and various synths dotted around. What is important with Tortoise is the journey their music takes you on, into territories that other bands would not have the ability or imagination to express and explore. Tortoise are special and in an egoless way they know it.