Tortoise release new album ‘Touch’
TRACKLIST
Vexations
Layered Presence
Works and Days
Elka
Promenade à deux
Axial Seamount
A Title Comes
Rated OG
Oganesson
Night Gang
CREDITS
All music written and performed by Tortoise
Tortoise is
Dan Bitney
John Herndon
Douglas McCombs
John McEntire
Jeff Parker
Viola on “Promenade à deux” – Marta Sofia Honer
Cello on “Promenade à deux” – Skip VonKuske
Field Recordings on “Works and Days” – Tucker Martine
Recorded at
Flora Recording and Playback, Portland OR;
64 Sound, Los Angeles CA;
Electrical Audio, Chicago IL
Mixed at Soma Electronic Music Studios, Gladstone OR
Recorded and Mixed by John McEntire
Mastered by Dave Cooley
at Elysian Masters, Los Angeles CA
Scorpion Photography – Heather Cantrell
Scorpion Sculpture – Martin McEntire
Collage Image – Paw Grabowski
Layout and Design – Jeremiah Chiu
Touch is out now, purchase it here.
Today, Tortoise — the iconic ensemble that “reset the stage for what might fit within indie rock” (MOJO) — release Touch, the first new album from the groundbreaking group since 2016, via International Anthem and Nonesuch Records on LP, CD, and digital download (available on streaming services on November 11). The band also shares a video for third streaming single and album standout “A Title Comes” by Nespy5euro.
Listen to & watch “A Title Comes” here.
Purchase Touch here.
On November 11th, Tortoise will collaborate with the Chicago Philharmonic for the first time in a special concert at The Auditorium in Chicago, where they will perform Tortoise songs new and old with arrangements written by Sean O’Hagan (High Llamas), Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes), Paul Von Mertens (Brian Wilson), and the band’s own Jeff Parker.
As noted in a preview of the show by Chicago Magazine, “to make their music work with 30 or so members of the [Chicago] Philharmonic, the band naturally needed new arrangements…‘Some of the stuff we’re getting sent, there’s new parts entirely,’ Dan Bitney says. ‘It never really occurred to me that they’d be adding melodic elements or these abstract kind of stabs. I’m just in awe of the whole thing.’” John Herndon of the band added: “Other than high school, I’ve never performed with a large orchestra… I am excited to just be immersed in that sound world.”
With Touch, the Tortoise band members — Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, and Jeff Parker — harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego towards an abstracted muscularity. While there are still excursions into the dusky, elegantly gnarled jazz ambience that flourished on landmark works like Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT, Touch is perhaps most remarkable for Tortoise’s unapologetic embrace of grand gesture. Aerodynamically re-engineered Krautrock, hand-cranked techno rave-ups, and pointillist desert guitar panoramas are all imbued with Tortoise’s now-signature internal logic — equally alluring and confounding, a puzzle to be savored rather than solved.
The stylistic diversity is also a reflection of the band’s current operating circumstances: With two members now in Los Angeles, another in Portland, and just two remaining in the band’s Chicago hometown, their creative process has shifted dramatically from when they lived together in a loft space in the late 1990s, honing their sound over endless hours of collective experimentation. Recorded between the three cities — Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago — Touch is the result of an intentional effort by these five musicians to reconnect, recenter, and reinvigorate their sound for what is perhaps the group’s most diverse release to date.
(Read more about Tortoise, their ground-breaking sound “informed by everything from jungle to Krautrock and musique concréte,” and the creation of Touch in a feature that ran September 19 over at The Guardian.)
A series of special live shows is planned through the end of the year, including the performance with Chicago Philharmonic, a three-night weekend stand at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom, and two shows at the Barbican for EFG London Jazz Festival.
Tortoise will then embark on European tours in early 2026, with more dates to be announced soon. The full list of confirmed dates and ticket links is below.
TOUR DATES
Marfa TX – Saturday October 25th – Flying Island – tickets
Chicago IL – Tuesday November 11th – The Auditorium w/ Chicago Philharmonic – tickets
Lexington KY – Wednesday November 12th – Singleton Center for the Arts – tickets
New York NY – Friday November 14th – Bowery Ballroom – SOLD OUT
New York NY – Saturday November 15th – Bowery Ballroom – SOLD OUT
New York NY – Sunday November 16th – Bowery Ballroom – tickets
London UK – Saturday November 22nd – Barbican – 1st show SOLD OUT, matinee show added
Bristol UK – Sunday November 23rd – The Prospect Building – tickets
Leeds UK – Monday November 24th – The Irish Centre – tickets
Helsinki FI – Tuesday January 20th – Tavastia – tickets
Stockholm SE – Wednesday January 21st – Fasching – tickets
Karlsruhe DE – Thursday January 22nd – Tollhaus – tickets
Lille FR – Friday January 23rd – Aeronef – tickets
Brussels BE – Saturday January 24th – Brussels Jazz Festival – tickets
Perugia IT – Sunday January 25th – Teatro del Pavone – tickets
Frankfurt DE – Monday January 26th – Zoom – tickets
Köln DE – Tuesday January 27th – Kantine – tickets
Paris FR – Wednesday January 28th – Le Trabendo – tickets
Berlin DE – Thursday January 29th – Großer Sendesaal des RBB – tickets
Dresden DE – Friday January 30th – Beatpol – tickets
Hamburg DE – Thursday April 9th – Kampnagel – tickets
Den Haag NL – Friday April 10th – Rewire Festival – tickets
Brugge BE – Saturday April 11th – Cactus Club – tickets
München DE – Sunday April 12th – Technikum – tickets
Salzburg AT – Monday April 13th – jazz:it – tickets
Graz AT – Tuesday April 14th – Orpheum – tickets
St. Gallen CH – Wednesday April 15th – Palace – tickets
Fribourg CH – Thursday April 16th – Fri-Son – tickets
Braga PT – Sunday April 19th – Theatro Circo
Lisboa PT – Monday April 20th – Culturgest
ABOUT TORTOISE
Photo by Yusuke Nagata
Tortoise is widely considered one of the most influential music groups of the last 40 years, with a wide-reaching impact on the contemporary music scene. Pitchfork says: “Imagine a graphic showing all the bands the five members of Tortoise were in before they came together and then all the bands they went on to play with after. At the top of the funnel you have groups ranging from dreamy psych-rock to earthy post-punk crunch, including Eleventh Dream Day, Bastro, Slint, and the Poster Children; on the ‘post-Tortoise’ end are groups focusing on electro-jazz and twangy instrumental rock like Isotope 217, Chicago Underground, and Brokeback. In this graphic, Tortoise is the choke point, the one project that has elements of all these sounds but is never defined by nor committed to any of them. Instead, Tortoise floats free, a planchette moving over a Ouija board guided by 10 sets of fingers, where everyone watches the arrow float in one direction but no one is quite sure how it gets there or who is doing the pushing.”
The band, which originally formed in Chicago in 1990, comprises Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon, and John McEntire.
Initially hailed as pace-setters of an emergent, cinematic instrumental evolution of alternative rock, the Chicago Tribune called Tortoise’s sound “mood music that refuses to be shoved into the background, as inviting as it is challenging.” Releasing just seven albums since 1990 — including classics like 1996’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1998’s TNT, and 2001’s Standards —Tortoise has steadily and intuitively evolved across its life, creating genreless music that is as timeless as it is ahead of the curve.
The band’s legacy goes beyond its recorded output, as well. Per the New York Times: “While Tortoise’s albums have experimented with the editing and overdubbing possibilities of the studio, the band thrives performing in real time.” Rolling Stone deems Tortoise “a live marvel,” while Pitchfork further says the band’s performances reveal that “at heart, they’re a supremely fun band, wide open to all sorts of sonic possibilities.”