Tortoise – München, Technikum

In the organizer's words:

TORTOISE

12.04.2026
Munich, Technikum

Admission: 19.00 hrs
Start: 20.00 hrs

VVK:
https://www.tixforgigs.com/Event/67741

Presented by: Rolling Stone & ByteFM

With "Touch", Tortoise band members Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon and John McEntire utilize their collectivist approach to songwriting. It's a slightly anarchistic but decidedly egalitarian process, where ideas triumph over ego and an abstract force emerges. While there are still forays into the dark, elegantly gnarly jazz ambience that flourished on milestones like "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" and "TNT", perhaps most notable is "Touch" Tortoise's uncompromising dedication to the grand gesture. Aerodynamically reworked krautrock, hand-twisted techno rave-ups and pointillist Italo-western fanfares are all imbued with Tortoise's now characteristic internal logic - seductive and confusing in equal measure, a puzzle to be savored rather than solved.

The stylistic diversity also reflects the band's current circumstances: two members now live in Los Angeles, another in Portland and only two remain in their hometown of Chicago. Their creative process has changed dramatically since the late 1990s, when they lived together in a loft and honed their sound through endless hours of collaborative experimentation. "Touch" was recorded in three cities - Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago - and is the result of a conscious effort by these five musicians to reconnect, re-center and reinvigorate their sound for perhaps the group's most diverse release to date.

"Touch" is the culmination of a long-planned reunion, the results of which Tortoise first announced last March when they released "Oganesson" - "an offbeat 7/4 funk song with a spy movie flavor" (New York Times) included on the new album - ahead of a career-spanning inaugural performance at cross-border music festival Big Ears. This was followed by the EP "Oganesson Remixes", which featured reworkings of the track by poet and activist Saul Williams, prolific mastering engineer Heba Kadry, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, indie music icons Broken Social Scene and her labelmate Makaya McCraven of International Anthem.