Now that we’ve entered the 30 year nostalgia window, it’s got me reflecting on that period of time that spanned the mid-90s up to 9/11 and what my generation of fidgety teenagers were listening to, what we were thinking. I realise that succumbing to the duvet of nostalgia is easy; when I was 18 we regarded everyone that said things were better in their day as a little staid and stuck. Sure, late 90s Stereolab borrowed heavily from 70s Germany, Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s fingerprints were all over the instrumental underground’s music as much as Steve Reich’s were, much “post-rock” was tame compared to Trout Mask Replica, yeah yeah whatever. It’s part of the culture machine’s prerogative to reimagine culture of old into new forms, of course, and it seems we’re now living in a kind of “Math-Rock” or “Post-Rock” revival. I’m all for it, because some of those records stand as sublime testaments to the human spirit, to open minds and generosity and, yes, even the power of ego.
Two records from the time exemplify all of these things and they’re both available again. Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die and Don Caballero’s American Don are different but they’re kind of like two buoys in a sea of mediocrity that pointed to ways out, ways forward. They’re two records that represent two forms of utopian thinking, or maybe magical thinking if I really think about it.
Tortoise’s second album is sublime. There’s no two ways about it. Their debut LP was a force of nature, peppered with minimalism but still showcasing the virtuosity of its musicians. For the follow up, the Chicagoans dove head first into an imagined utopia, paring back their playing to allow the music to flow into heavenly mind realms. Much of the music is reminiscent of dub and its 90s reimagining by people like Pole, or Jan Jelenik’s turn of the centuries minimalist statements. There are still lush moments aplenty, where the bands’ early 90s influences shine through but there’s a wash of open-eyed optimism that in today’s dystopian reality feels gloriously hopeful. The glockenspiel splashes that dapple the record, shimmering into the middle distance like haze on an empty beach, you wish they’d reverberate forever. The band are so in-sync and careful to give each other space. Indeed, a lot of the record consists of one or two instruments in conversation, the others sitting back in a state of ready bliss. It’s also so fresh how the group interpret Slint’s brooding guitarist approach (Dave Pajo was a Tortoise at this point, of course) into something fit for the 21st Century. In 1996, it was to be a century when ways of thinking changed, boundaries broken, musical forms and modes blending and reforming into unforeseen musical languages. As we were swimming in the flush of globalisation, we were the No Logo generationThe 21st Century was to be a post-capitalist utopia, people free of ego and working together for the advancement of music and humanity. Tortoise and this generation of musicians saw the future.
When the future came, it ended up not like that at all. Don Caballero’s American Don, released in October 2000 was a-blaze with egos, showmanship, dizzying virtuosity and hyperactive percussion grounded in both heavy, “math” rock and future music. I love how the name of the album, “American Don” intentionally or unintentionally pointed to American exceptionalism: here were musicians forging a new kind of rock language built on their individual prowess and supreme confidence. The musicians play like they own music, like machines. At the centre of the group was drummer Damon Che, whose drumming ability echoed all the greats of Jazz and Rock music, here recorded by Steve Albini for that extra dry heft he gave all drum recordings. To be sure, American Don was less of an out-and-out assault as previous Don Caballero material, but the layers and layers of guitar, processing and melody point to characters almost fighting each other to stand out. The result is a total head banging display of rhythmic, synapse-rearrangement and gratuitous musicianship. There are still seams of beauty all over American Don, specifically the interweaving guitars that suggest a hyper-pop reimagining of Television. Famously, the group were near breaking point at this time and didn’t survive much beyond this, with groups Storm & Stress (who were active at the same time, granted) and the more commercially successful Battles emerging shortly after from these members. Theirs was a self-belief that encapsulated the blazing ambition of the turn of the century, an ambition that seemed at odds with Tortoise’s measured, mediative and human music. In the end, the Twin Tower attack and the “war on terror” shepherded in a new age of paranoia and fear which makes these attempts to re-think the future seem naive and touching. By the mid 00s the culture had started to swallow itself even more blatantly than before, the ghosts of the past looming larger, offering a blanket of reassurance and comfort in an uncertain epoch. In that hauntological future, we couldn’t escape the past. Or maybe that’s just one interpretation of it. Maybe music wasn’t better in my day.
These two records represent this wide-open future that never seemed to arrive.