Tortoise – Touch

Tortoise return with Touch, their first album in nearly a decade. Led by the single 'Layered Presence', the record balances taut rhythmic pulses with searching melodic themes, expanding the band’s post-genre vocabulary.

Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon, and John McEntire continue their collaborative approach, producing music where experimentation overrides ego. Echoes of their classic jazz-infused ambience remain, but Touch embraces bolder gestures — reshaped krautrock grooves, electronic rave-ups, and cinematic western flourishes, all tied together by the band’s distinct logic.

Now based across Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, the group forged the album as an act of reconnection. It includes 'Oganesson', an “off-kilter, 7/4 funk tune with a spy-movie ambience” (New York Times), previously reworked on the Oganesson Remixes EP by Saul Williams, Heba Kadry, Patrick Carney, Broken Social Scene, and Makaya McCraven.

Reviews

"it's not just a band getting back together after nearly a decade apart, but a band reaffirming the ideals that animated them in the first place." – Uncut

"The wait, rewarded." – Mojo

"There’s a careful sequencing to the record that one can only appreciate listening to it in its entirety. Let it take you places." – Glide Magazine

"What a blessed relief, given all this, that Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, collectively, still sound wholly and unapologetically like themselves." – The Wire