Thursday, August 17, 2006

A Lazarus Taxon

(originally posted at crw.vox.com)

My new Tortoise box set arrived today.  Included in the box was a Thrill Jockey bumper sticker and a limited print poster of the album cover.  The black and white photographs on the disc sleeves are from a former (Polish?) police officer who photographed accidents.

Each band member contributed a short essay to the liner notes, each essay in a different language (English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese).  The essay in English has some interesting quotes from Brian Eno:
"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"

"...once we get used to the idea that we are no longer consumers of 'finished' works... we find ourselves leaving a world of 'know your own station' passivity... we stop regarding things as fixed and unchangeable, as preordained, and we increasingly find ourselves practicing the idea that we have some control."
Pretty relevant in today's forever-beta/gamma world. - even if taken out of context.

The stand-out features of the DVD include both a live performance and proper music video of Glass Museum, along with a live version of Gamera and the music vid for Seneca.  Seneca uses some amazing archival footage from NASA and can be found on YouTube (the dissonance drops off and the melody kicks in around 1:54).

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