Tortoise Album: “Lazarus Taxon”

This has to be the best bargain since I found a Harry Partch record for 50 cents in a public library sale. The first CD alone in "A Lazarus Taxon" is worth the cover price. In the liner notes, Alan Licht quotes Brian Eno's "Unfinished" essay: "It used to be the case that a record was expected to contain the definitive and perhaps only version of a song, and that the job of the band and the producer was to create this "ideal" object." This collection does a great job of dispelling that old notion forever, as some of the tracks are so much developed from the originals that they resemble a house built around 300 year old foundations. To hear how "Gamera" evolved out of "His Second Story Island" is intriguing--maybe it should be the subject of a documentary in itself. This is now my favorite Tortoise CD; I thought "Millions Now Living" would never be bettered, but this one makes this band's music more like the living, open source language it should be. The production is so good that I decided to buy better earphones, and better speakers. (Maybe it wasn't so much of a bargain, after all.)

I bought this a few months ago and have listened to it many times since then, so I think my opinion is pretty "cooled off" or objective. But I guess that doesn't matter anyways, because I still think just as highly of it as when I first popped it in. Basically, if you are a Tortoise fan, this is a no-brainer (3 CDs! A DVD! Startlingly good price!). It gives you a really broad look at their "earlier" sound, which put me off when I first listened to some of their older stuff at 16, but as my taste developed, my appreciation grew to the point where I actually like this style more than their newest stuff(like Standards, It's All Around You). Some of the tracks are definately more experimental, but you just have to appreciate them for what they are. Of the tracks of that variety, I especially like "Whitewater" and "Cobwebbed." They are kind of melodic and ambient...you could compare them to some Aphex Twin....but they have their own "cool" to it. The remixes are also great. Nobukazu Takemura's remix of TNT is really sweet...the way he manipulates the droning windchimes at the end of it to give the sound such depth and space evokes an epic and withdrawn mood, where you just kind of melt away. I think of some ancient Japanese ritual when I hear it, but that's just me. I won't even begin to describe the unreal energy of the opener, "Gamera." And then there is the DVD. Some of the music videos are kind of weak in my opinion, but others are fantastic, and another is kind of funny and bizarre. It's rad to see them play Gamera live, when it was a new song in the mid-90s. All in all, this is a great collection. I recently had the chance to see them at the Troubador in LA, which further solidified them in my mind as a remarkable band. I wouldn't miss out on this one.

The videos on the DVD are great. Some of the live stuff is pretty good, particularly the recording of "salt the skies" and the 40+ minute set. The CD's may include a little too much material, but there is plenty of good work to find on these 3-discs. Recommended.

This is a fantastic deal it should by rights be available to everyone.

While I have been a fan of Tortoise going back to the first album, none of their records (not even my favorites: the self-titled and TNT) ever managed to work so well as this finely crafted collection. Particularly discs 1 and 2 of this box-set are nearly always somewhere near my stereo, itching to get played again. Part of the reason for that is they are non-stop sheer brilliance, but moreover the music here is so dynamic and it just feels absolutely perfect for so many moods.

As might often be the case with Tortoise records, this box-set stands to be your favorite album that you probably won't ever think to list amongst your favorites. It's content to be played while you get on with whatever else you're doing. And that's okay, because whether this set is your main focus to chill out to, or the soundtrack to your evening, it's always good and you'll never feel like it isn't the right time to throw it on.

So yeah, and the 3rd disc is really cool, too. And to top it all of the DVD has lots and lots of cool performances and some videos and tv spots. Plus the box is very nicely designed, and the booklet is nice too.

No complaints are in order. Everyone needs to have this set. It's just that simple, and you'll never regret it.

first off, let me say i LOVE tortoise... one of the very, very best. 20 years from now they will be studied and broken down like miles davis or coltrane by aspiring musicians. perfection.

but this boxset was one of the biggest dissapointments i have ever had with a music purchase. over the span of 3 cd's there was almost NOTHING to catch the ear... unless you are a tortoise junkie and every blippity-bloopin remix is pure heaven. there is a reason these tracks have never been formally released--they are shockingly subpar for a band as monolithic as tortoise. and why would someone ever take something as perfect and untouchable as a tortoise track and rip it up into tiny little pieces, assembling it into something so obviously distant in quality from the original? c'mon.

the dvd wasn't much better either. there were only a couple of live clips of high quality, the rest was purely for archival purposes and nothing more.

blah.