I wonder if most people hear Tortoise and assume its wholly improvised music. Indeed, the slow creature does jam live sometimes, and most of the first two albums come from material slowly honed in jams. Yet, a lot of the grooves and interplay between vibes, percussion, keys, and basses are of the type that comes from careful arrangement and order. It makes an interesting question, exactly how much thought can be put into a piece before playing, before it stops being jazz?
If you don't need your instrumental music to ask such questions, or even if you do, this is still a great album. When a band or collective like Tortoise has so many side bands, or other projects, often times the quality level lags. This is not the case with Isotope 217. Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Johnny Herndon, and Bundy K. Brown are the members from various incarnations of the band; they join (among others) horn and reed players Sara Smith, Rob Mazurek for an electric-Miles/Headhunters-Herbie Hancock-ish album here.
Parker himself has said that this particular band is influenced by more than such obvious groups, but I suppose either my experience is too limited to verify that, or such a description is a bit too limiting sounding in his mind. But hey, sounding like electric era Miles Davis is a great thing in my ears. I haven't heard stuff as brainy and funky as "Beneath the Undertow" since I was a toddler in Texas watching the "1 - 2-3 - 4-5 - 6-7 - 8-9 - 10-11 - 12" song on Sesame Street.
To this band's credit, all the pleasures here are not just of the rhythmic variety, and the horns are not just here to take solos. When things get quieter and get more spacious, the beauty of the arrangements comes through big time. The down-tempo reworking of Tortoise's "Jetty" (cast here as "La Jeteé") is genius. The only thing I didn't like about this disk was just in the lack of two things. One, percussion. They have so much of it, and they do it so well, so why not have even more? Two, length. It's a great album, I could take 84 minutes of this and not just a tad over a half hour like they gave me instead.
