Tortoise

Tortoise is the best of the instrumental post-rock bands that all these intellectual smarty-pants like too much these days. Most of those guys are just background music that annoyingly seeps into the forefront, but these guys you can actually listen to.

see The Sea and Cake, Slint, Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Information: Tortoise
Suggested first purchase: Millions Now Living Will Never Die

Tortoise (1994) -- Here's what happens when you use rock music instruments to make non rock music. B

Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) -- The opening track "Djed" is pretty fancy, lasting over twenty minutes. You can actually groove it and it's constantly-changingness. B

TNT (1998) -- Another nice Tortoise work. There's really not much to say about these albums. B

Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billy: The Brave and the Bold (2006) -- From the guy who makes filing your CD collection an impossible task comes a pairing with Tortoise where they do cover songs, few of which are recognizable (which is more or less a good thing). The project isn't as interesting as you'd expect or hope -- it ends up just being okay songs instead of something mind-blowing -- but worth having for fans of either artist. B