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TORTOISE | Berlin
Event by: New Berlin Konzerte & Events GmbH, Berthold Seliger - Büro für Musik, Texte & Strategien
Location: Haus des Rundfunks & Großer Sendesaal, Masurenallee 8-14, Berlin - Bezirk Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Tickets: Get tickets
About event
Tortoise is considered one of the world's most influential musical groups of the last 40 years, with far-reaching influence on the contemporary music scene.
Let's put it to Pitchfork: "Imagine a graph showing all the bands the five members of Tortoise were in before they got together, and then all the bands they played in afterward. At the top of the funnel you'll find groups ranging from dreamy psych-rock to earthy Post-punk Crunch, including Eleventh Dream Day, Bastro, Slint and the Poster Children; at the end of the 'Post-Tortoise' line are groups focused on electro-jazz and twangy instrumental rock, such as Isotope 217, Chicago Underground and Brokeback. In this chart, Tortoise is the bottleneck, the only project that contains elements of all of these sounds but never feels defined by or indebted to any of them Tortoise free, a planchette that moves across a Ouija board, controlled by ten pairs of fingers, with everyone watching the arrow float in a direction, but no one knows exactly how it gets there or who pushes it."
The music press at the time also didn't really know what to describe Tortoise's new music and invented the term "post-rock". Tortoise have only released seven albums since 1990 - including classics like "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" (1996), "TNT" (1998) and "Standards" (2001). But the band has developed steadily and intuitively over the course of their career, creating cross-genre music that is as timeless as it is ahead of its time.
So now the turtle is adding another milestone to its dazzling career: “Touch”, the first album since 2016. It is no coincidence that “Touch” is released on International Anthem (IARC), the state-of-the-art label from Chicago, and on Nonesuch Records. On “Touch,” the Tortoise band members utilize their collectivist approach to songwriting, a slightly anarchistic but decidedly egalitarian process in which ideas triumph over ego and an abstract force emerges. While there are still forays into the dark, elegantly gnarly jazz ambiance ("Millions Now Living Will Never Die" or "TNT"), "Touch" is perhaps most notable for its uncompromising commitment to the band's grand gesture. “Aerodynamically reworked Krautrock, hand-turned techno rave-ups and pointillist Spaghetti Western fanfares are all imbued with Tortoise's now characteristic inner logic - equally enticing and confusing, a puzzle that should be enjoyed rather than solved," says IARC in the press release for the new album.
And Tortoise has always particularly thrived "live" anyway, as the "New York Times" notes. The US "Rolling Stone" described the band as "a live marvel", while "Pitchfork" points out that Tortoise are, last but not least, an "incredibly entertaining band": "At heart, they're a supremely fun band, wide open to all sorts of sonic possibilities."
After a few appearances in England in November 2025, including two long-sold out shows at the legendary Barbican Centre, Tortoise Almost ten years after their last appearances in January and April 2026, they will finally go on tour in Europe again. Further festival appearances and shows are planned for summer and fall 2026. 2026 - this is likely to be a year of the turtle...
The band, which was originally founded in Chicago in 1990, consists of the multi-instrumentalists Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker.
"This is about energy, pulse and a fight with the unknown. (...) The music rocks as much as it can (...) Sometimes you get the impression that the music is immediately turning into a power cable transferred to the listener’s body.” (Wolf Kampmann)
"When the music was still daring. The avant-garde rock band Tortoise reminds us of how stylistically open pop could once be. (...) When the lights come back on, it's as if you landed back on earth after an eventful trip to another planet." (Philipp Krohn, FAZ)
"The quintet is in a great playing mood. The always stupid label 'post-rock' is less appropriate today than ever before. Using a wide variety of memories, Tortoise searches for an improvised music of the future." (Jürgen Ziemer, Rolling Stone)
Presented by radioeins, Rolling Stone and ByteFM
Let's put it to Pitchfork: "Imagine a graph showing all the bands the five members of Tortoise were in before they got together, and then all the bands they played in afterward. At the top of the funnel you'll find groups ranging from dreamy psych-rock to earthy Post-punk Crunch, including Eleventh Dream Day, Bastro, Slint and the Poster Children; at the end of the 'Post-Tortoise' line are groups focused on electro-jazz and twangy instrumental rock, such as Isotope 217, Chicago Underground and Brokeback. In this chart, Tortoise is the bottleneck, the only project that contains elements of all of these sounds but never feels defined by or indebted to any of them Tortoise free, a planchette that moves across a Ouija board, controlled by ten pairs of fingers, with everyone watching the arrow float in a direction, but no one knows exactly how it gets there or who pushes it."
The music press at the time also didn't really know what to describe Tortoise's new music and invented the term "post-rock". Tortoise have only released seven albums since 1990 - including classics like "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" (1996), "TNT" (1998) and "Standards" (2001). But the band has developed steadily and intuitively over the course of their career, creating cross-genre music that is as timeless as it is ahead of its time.
So now the turtle is adding another milestone to its dazzling career: “Touch”, the first album since 2016. It is no coincidence that “Touch” is released on International Anthem (IARC), the state-of-the-art label from Chicago, and on Nonesuch Records. On “Touch,” the Tortoise band members utilize their collectivist approach to songwriting, a slightly anarchistic but decidedly egalitarian process in which ideas triumph over ego and an abstract force emerges. While there are still forays into the dark, elegantly gnarly jazz ambiance ("Millions Now Living Will Never Die" or "TNT"), "Touch" is perhaps most notable for its uncompromising commitment to the band's grand gesture. “Aerodynamically reworked Krautrock, hand-turned techno rave-ups and pointillist Spaghetti Western fanfares are all imbued with Tortoise's now characteristic inner logic - equally enticing and confusing, a puzzle that should be enjoyed rather than solved," says IARC in the press release for the new album.
And Tortoise has always particularly thrived "live" anyway, as the "New York Times" notes. The US "Rolling Stone" described the band as "a live marvel", while "Pitchfork" points out that Tortoise are, last but not least, an "incredibly entertaining band": "At heart, they're a supremely fun band, wide open to all sorts of sonic possibilities."
After a few appearances in England in November 2025, including two long-sold out shows at the legendary Barbican Centre, Tortoise Almost ten years after their last appearances in January and April 2026, they will finally go on tour in Europe again. Further festival appearances and shows are planned for summer and fall 2026. 2026 - this is likely to be a year of the turtle...
The band, which was originally founded in Chicago in 1990, consists of the multi-instrumentalists Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker.
"This is about energy, pulse and a fight with the unknown. (...) The music rocks as much as it can (...) Sometimes you get the impression that the music is immediately turning into a power cable transferred to the listener’s body.” (Wolf Kampmann)
"When the music was still daring. The avant-garde rock band Tortoise reminds us of how stylistically open pop could once be. (...) When the lights come back on, it's as if you landed back on earth after an eventful trip to another planet." (Philipp Krohn, FAZ)
"The quintet is in a great playing mood. The always stupid label 'post-rock' is less appropriate today than ever before. Using a wide variety of memories, Tortoise searches for an improvised music of the future." (Jürgen Ziemer, Rolling Stone)
Presented by radioeins, Rolling Stone and ByteFM