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PRICE:
$14.50
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
The Catastrophist
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
THRILL 406CD THRILL 406CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
6/12/2026

CD version in four-panel mini-LP style gatefold package. "Simply put, Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own. It's a fact that remains true on The Catastrophist, Tortoise's first studio album in nearly seven years. And it's an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cozy up next to hypnotic, bass-and-beat missives like 'Shake Hands With Danger' and a downright strange cover of David Essex's 1973 radio smash sung by U.S. Maple's Todd Rittmann. Throughout, the songs transcend expectations as often as they delight the eardrums. Tortoise, comprised of multi-instrumentalists Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire, and Jeff Parker, has always thrived on sudden bursts of inspiration. And for The Catastrophist, the spark came in 2010 when the group was commissioned by the City of Chicago to compose a suite of music rooted in its ties to the area's noted jazz and improvised music communities. Tortoise then performed those five loose themes at a handful of concerts, and 'when we finally got around to talking about a new record, the obvious solution to begin with was to take those pieces and see what else we could do with them,' says McEntire, at whose Soma Studios the band recorded the new album. As ever, Tortoise has conjured sounds on The Catastrophist that aren't being purveyed anywhere else in music today. There's a deeply intuitive interplay between the group members that comes only from two decades of experimentation, revision and improvisation."