Alfa Mist - Antiphon.

Have a listen to the band’s latest jazz-infused album ahead of its release, and let us know your thoughts.

The Catastrophist by Tortoise, released 22 January 2016 1. The Catastrophist 2. Ox Duke 3. Rock On 4. Gopher Island 5. Shake Hands With Danger 6. The Clearing Fills 7. Gesceap 8. Hot Coffee 9. Yonder Blue 10. Tesseract 11. At Odds With Logic Simply put, Tortoise has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. It’s a fact that remains true on The Catastrophist, Tortoise’s first studio album in nearly seven years. And it’s an album where moody, synth-swept jams like the opening title track cozy up next to hypnotic, bass-and-beat missives like Shake Hands With Danger and a downright strange cover of David Essex’s 1973 radio smash sung by . Maple’s Todd Rittman. Throughout, the songs transcend expectations as often as they delight the eardrums.

The Catastrophist is Tortoise's first album ever to prominently feature guest vocalists, and they chose wisely. Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo provides vocals to the distorted, laid-back soul ballad "Yonder Blue" which makes exquisite use of her soft, choirboy voice. There's a lack of the slightly more rock-oriented, guitar-driven pieces the band became popular for (the urgency of their 1998 record TNT, for example, is absent), but it has been replaced by almost tongue-in-cheek flourishes in some places: "Gopher Island" clocks in at just over a minute and might seem like mid-album fodder, but multiple.

Complete your Tortoise collection. To me is the most engaging album they released since "Standards" and i actually find "The Catastrophist" to be better than that one, there's not a boring track, the two songs with guest vocals are great and the sound is always warm throughout.

Tortoise – The Catastrophist. A worthy and worthwhile addition to the innovative band's discography. on January 18, 2016, 12:00am. But that isn’t to say the album sounds old or stale. The songs on The Catastrophist may in some ways feel familiar, but only because of the wide-ranging sonic palate Tortoise call their own. The five members that make up the band are nothing short of virtuosic in both their playing and vision, and have proven so time and again across their seven albums, as well as their laundry list of other lauded projects and collaborations from Isotope to The Sea and Cake.

The Catastrophist is another shining example of the band’s ability to forge multitudes of different sounds into something new – something singular, that can really only be described as, well, sounding like Tortoise. Rarely do a band’s individual elements work so perfectly together. The long-time veterans Tortoise return with a new album that is as much about post-rock as it is about prog-rock. Their primary post-rock influences still show up, mainly on the most slow-burning tracks like.

Tortoise is the debut studio album by American post-rock band Tortoise. It was released on June 22, 1994 on the Thrill Jockey record label. By March 1998, Tortoise had sold 35,000 copies (8,000 LPs and 27,000 CDs).

The Catastrophist Tracklist. 1. The Catastrophist Lyrics.