Tortoise at the Esplanade Annexe

I'm glad to have caught Tortoise in Singapore in 2005 and 2011, and elsewhere. They sang the songs of my junior college days. The band is very much older now. Their average ages are like, 59 years old. I mean, they've stuck around for 40 years. FOUR DECADES. The members pretty much remained the same since Bundy Brown and David Pajo left way back in 1996/1998.

Last year, 'Touch' came out. This is their eighth studio album. I'm reminded of how music-making used to be; the younger bands rarely make music this way anymore. I didn't realize back then that their genre is considered 'post-rock'. I only know that I like bands without vocals. Their music has been described as "interweaving repetitive motorik krautrock rhythms with sophisticated jazz improvisations, minimalist structures, and subtle electronic text."

I really enjoyed the show. It was soooo... for the lack of a better word... nostalgic. They played the songs of my youth, and then they played something more. While tonight's show was a mix of old and new, I still don't know all their songs. I didn't bother to memorize all of those, and I don't play it enough to be that familiar. I got lost at some point regarding which pieces were from which album, and I couldn't even recognize two pieces. Hahaha.

Of course they played 'Ten-Day Interval' and 'The Equator' (from one of my fav albums 'TNT', 1998). There was 'Gesceap' from ('The Catastrophist', 2016). They did new songs too — 'Night Gang' and 'Layered Presence' ('Touch', 2025). I'm less keen on the jazz bits, and more into the heavier parts, but this album would do.