Tortoise are covering new ground

Even after 30-plus years of boundary-smashing, genre-agnostic output, Chicago’s returning motorik post-rockers Tortoise prove there’s always fresh terrain to explore with Touch – a shape-shifting album crafted across cities and pulsing with restless curiosity.

“We’re always trying to make the most interesting thing we can,” Doug McCombs says. “We figure if it’s interesting to us, it will probably be interesting to someone else. That’s the only thing we think about when we write and play as a group.”

Since co-founding the instrumental quintet Tortoise in Chicago in 1990, McCombs and his band have attracted a slew of descriptors – “interesting” among them – for their genre-hopping, amorphous sound. Variously labelled “pioneers of post-rock”, “anti-grunge” and even “post-prog”, the group’s seven albums since 1994’s self-titled debut have encompassed everything from synth experimentation to 20-minute, groove-shifting odysseys, jazz improvisation, dub bass, krautrock drums, polyrhythmic guitar picking and yearning, emotive melody. An influence on bands like Squid and Moin, drummer Makaya McCraven and the avant-jazz musician Anna Butterss, Tortoise have crafted a soundscape that leaves space not just for guitar distortion but for a meticulous confluence of electronic and acoustic instrumentation, a sense of structure poised on the verge of cacophony and chaos.

It’s a sonic signature that belongs as much to Tortoise as it does their hometown, Chicago. “The music scene here is just so open and progressive,” McCombs says, sporting his trademark chest-length white beard over a video call from his Chicago home. “Over the decades, it has changed in small ways, but artists here still don’t adhere to boundaries, and so audiences are also open to hearing things they might not expect.”

“It’s the creative music capital of the world,” guitarist Jeff Parker chimes in. “It’s avant-garde and really independent, and that’s reflected in the music that comes out of the city.”

Yet, nine years on from their last release, 2016’s The Catastrophist, Tortoise are back with their first album not made entirely in the Windy City. While bassist McCombs and multi-instrumentalist Dan Bitney remain in Chicago, recent years have seen Parker and drummer John Herndon relocate to LA, and engineer John McEntire to Portland. The ten tracks on their new album Touch were created remotely over the span of three years, with individual band members creating demos to send back and forth for feedback and embellishment before the group organised sporadic get-togethers in their respective cities to hash out compositions face to face in the studio.

“We spent a lot of time not working on the record, as it could be months between these studio sessions,” McCombs says, alluding to the band members’ hectic schedules away from Tortoise – more on that later. “That meant the music would sit with us for longer but equally, when it came down to it, we had less time to procrastinate together, so we had to make decisions faster as a group.”

Describing their typical writing process as a form of trial and error, in which individual ideas or demos would be workshopped together, broken apart and reformed to see if they could still embody the indefinable Tortoise sound, Parker explains that on Touch they flipped that method on its head. “Rather than taking ideas apart, when we had the chance to be together in the studio we were adding to the demos as a template,” he says over a call from his LA home. “Strangely, it produced some of our most cohesive work, and since we had those breaks between sessions, we also had the chance to road-test and refine certain tunes we found tricky, like Vexations and Works and Days.”

The result is some of Tortoise’s most muscular and propulsive work to date. With band members shifting between a range of instruments – bassist McCombs adds guitar to three tracks; Parker augments his guitar work with clavinet, organ and bass; drummer Herndon plays synths; Bitney experiments with vibraphone and percussion alongside synth; and McEntire contributes piano, vocoder, tambura, organ and more – the album displays a driving, electronic-infused energy. Opener Vexations sets the tone with its chugging guitar riff and building buzz of distortion as the groove grows more aggressive, while Elka hammers through Detroit techno kick drums. Layered Presence couples twinkling harpsichord with Parker’s soaring guitar like a prog-influenced quest, and Axial Seamount speeds through a steadfast motorik machine rhythm as a synth melody whispers and dissipates. Works and Days, meanwhile, showcases the band’s aptitude for teetering between joy and unease, undulating on a downtempo groove as atonal synth sounds scrape through the frame before shimmering vibraphone melody and gentle guitar chords cohere into a blissful, jazz-influenced swing.

“Ever since we started the band, we wanted it to be a space where we could each play what we want, with no leadership roles among ourselves,” McCombs says. “There are no boundaries, so we’ve had to be patient for the music to emerge in the way it needs to. Touch, like all our other records, is a reflection of that process, even if we didn’t make it all in the same space.”

Coming together in the wake of the early 90s grunge explosion, co-founders McCombs and Herndon initially envisaged Tortoise as a freelance rhythm section for hire across a range of genres. After meeting McEntire, Bitney and bassist Bundy K Brown in the city’s vibrant DIY scene, the group developed their freewheeling ethos into instrumental music that rejected grunge’s grit and distortion in favour of clean, pointillist experimentation, delving into electronics as much as the guitar’s lead melodics.

Signing to Chicago upstart imprint Thrill Jockey, the group released their 1994 self-titled debut to minimal fanfare, delivering ten tracks of moody, downtempo atmospherics anchored in thudding drum beats. It wasn’t until 1996’s second record, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, and its 20-minute opener Djed, that the group began drawing critical attention. Labelled post-rock for their slippery sense of groove and non-linear, slowly unfurling arrangements, Tortoise welcomed jazz-trained guitarist Parker into the fold before releasing their acclaimed third album, TNT, in 1998 – a part-jazz, part-electronica, part-cinematic masterpiece that cemented them as an instrumental force beyond any single descriptor.

“I remember the first time I saw Tortoise; I had never heard anything like it – they had a really unique, free-flowing sound,” Parker says with a smile. “I used to sit in on shows when they played Chicago, and once they asked me to be in the group, I was very conscious of keeping the focus away from the guitar. I wanted to stay out of the way, as otherwise we could have easily tipped into being a fusion band!”

“There could have been a lot less sensitive guitar players seeing Tortoise as the ideal format to play a bunch of shit over,” McCombs adds. “Jeff’s sensibility just matched ours perfectly and it’s been great for nearly three decades now.”

Alongside building his chops with Tortoise, Parker has established himself as one of the most distinct and in-demand players in contemporary jazz, releasing several hypnotic, groove-laden albums on Chicago label International Anthem and collaborating with artists such as Makaya McCraven and Natural Information Society composer Joshua Abrams. Away from Tortoise, Herndon produces instrumental hip-hop under the name A Grape Dope, while his son is viral rapper 2hollis. Meanwhile, McCombs tours with fellow Chicago band The Sea and Cake, and McEntire has engineered for the likes of Stereolab, Broken Social Scene and Yo La Tengo.

The elder statesmen of alternative instrumental music, Tortoise have spent 30 years wrangling their ineffable sound – but they are far from reaching their twilight years. The group are about to embark on an extensive tour through the US, UK and Europe from late 2025 into early 2026, including a career retrospective date with the Chicago Philharmonic that will feature new arrangements from Parker. “It’s maybe the stupidest thing I’ve done,” he laughs. “It’s so much work, as I’ve never written anything for such a huge ensemble before.”

Touch also marks their first release away from Thrill Jockey, partnering instead with International Anthem. It’s a full-circle moment as the boundary-defying band links up with the similarly minded hometown label with a reputation for championing genre-breaking acts. “[Label founder] Scottie is a generation younger than us, and he grew up listening to Tortoise and having a crazy reverence for the band,” Parker says. “We thought it was time to try something different, and even though it was a really hard decision, International Anthem put everything into their projects. I knew there would be so much energy behind us and a younger perspective happening.”

It’s a powerful moment of renewal for Tortoise – a new label, new cities and fresh inspirations. Finding new ways to create away from their beloved Chicago, the band are evolving well into their fourth decade of music-making. Reinvention isn’t just a phase – it’s their nature. “This is what we do,” McCombs says, nodding his head. “We’ll always be finding and following that sense of interest.”