Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0139 (October 28, 2025)

TORTOISE Touch LP (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

Beautiful returns here, not just from a gritty vitality which has enlivened Tortoise, but also to the very idea of what and why Tortoise is. Chicago can’t take too many more L’s right now so here’s a big W flag flyin’, the unit returning after a nine-year studio absence with a double shot of confidence riding shotgun. The electronics shift from 2016’s The Catastrophist is still present, but the sterility of that release is gone – we need hairy knuckles and dirt and powder burns, and Tortoise, of all bands, heeds the call, synths grindin’/gruntin’, taking a load off of the vibraphone and Jeff Parker’s gorgeous guitar and batting up a sizable increase in percussion. If you ever took issue with their nods towards Krautrock or certain modal fusion moves, Tortoise may still not be for you, but point yourselves towards a formidable cut like “Elka” with its icy, racing drum computer and Winter Olympics-inspired competitive pressure, and all of a sudden you’re in the next gear. Tortoise for the club, Tortoise for the gym, Tortoise for the run. Plenty of other groups right now are at the spa, and I’m sure these guys are gonna need to join them for a shvitz after playing some sets of these tracks, but it’s real, it’s happening, they’re standing up, they’re showing us who they are and it's really good. It’s also worth noting that they’ve decamped for International Anthem, a label that’s been dutifully documenting jazz/R&B/fusion/peace artists that have grown like moonflowers in Tortoise’s long shadow, now with the root structure to put some real weight atop the family tree.

JIM WHITE Inner Day LP (Drag City)

So maybe you don’t think Jim White is one of the most important drummers of our age. Even still some might have some vague complaints with his solo debut All Hits: Memories from last year, maybe on the grounds that 24 minutes might not fit your definition of a full-length album (in which case, if you’re so obsessed with value, maybe you’d better stay at the Steak ‘n’ Shake). There’s no harm in being wrong. The real hurdle is the embarrassment of being wrong. WHAT IF you didn’t get angry at everything that happened, that some slight would stick with you for decades until you finally did the wrong thing about it? WHAT IF you worked on your emotional intelligence? Well, when you do, Jim’ll be here with Inner Day. Same practice as last time – keyboards and drums – but with a re-centered approach that puts a little more change in the cup of melody and songcraft, while keeping the ideas fresh and intact. White still seems gloriously focused with the tools he has, and the playing snaps to, but he’s more keen on certain points where the rhythms don’t align (“Longwood,” “Two Ruffys,” the serene deflation of “11.12.24”), which would sound pat in lesser hands, but here opens a window to mutual understanding. Most importantly, he knows where Grand Central Oyster Bar is, and even if Zoh Amba would rather go somewhere else do (dew) (Doo) to spilling white wine on her shoes there, he’s zeroed in on my favorite place in my favorite place in NYC. Did they try the talking arch thing? I’m sure all wine spills would be forgotten in light of that architectural aperitif.

SCORCHED BOGON Dust on the Flame CS (Burgan Triangle Tapes)

Here for whatever engine is driving this creative spark out of Australia, a dry, clattering zone for My Pit/Yeats-informed drums and string/scrape skree, doled out in two-minute portions where they get the streaky bits out of the way early. Playing – maybe toying – with tension dynamics from tracks 6 through 12 creates a suite of sounds that drift in and out of one another, with astute control over the hows and whys and loudness. It’s like life busting out of the soil come springtime.

MORWAN Все по колу, знову LP (Feel It)

Third effort from this gripping dark rock band from Kyiv (now based, for concerns of safety/sanity, in Berlin), led by vocalist Alex Ashtaui. Now converted to a full band, in that particular location, they’re reminding me of those DIÄT records on Iron Lung, but with more of a premium on Goth/darked out moods and textures, wasp synths, and peril. Tracks are much heavier than previous outings, with suitable droning crunch (“Без обличчя”), maximum duster spin/fling solo dance zone (“Остання мить”) and forlorn horizons (“Не чекай”) that play it for the big room, like the most recent Cure album. Only good things happen to Morwan from now on. Nature (human and otherwise) strikes back!

THE DISSIDENTS/D.O.V.E. A Better World split LP (Grow Your Own)

I didn’t know Bill Chamberlain, but anyone looking for a single person who made such a footprint in East Coast punk might have trouble finding any larger. Bill played guitar in The Pist, Behind Enemy Lines, Caustic Christ, The Brood, React, Brutally Familiar, Mankind? and others I’m likely missing, the connection between Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and points outward, and by all accounts the most generous spirit you could hope to encounter in that world, and the impact he had on people close to me cannot be exaggerated. He was also the partner to my bud Rachel, and they both played in a peace punk band called The Dissidents, whose final recordings are presented on one half of this split LP. They deliver eight forceful songs with a massive sled of guitar beneath voices that sum up our sad state of affairs; their half of this record pretty much covers all of the problems we’re facing today between the personal (“Twisted Cell,” about cancer) and the political (everything else), and the connections between. Those sentiments are matched by D.O.V.E., a California group of the same mind, with a more pronounced melodic style that at times reminds me of Agent Orange. I’m sure some of you are wondering what to do with these sentiments when it feels so hopeless. But we’re smart and passionate people, and we will endure. Sometimes you need to know you’re heard, seen and felt by something that isn’t someone’s late night panic tweets rattling around in your brain unaccompanied. You need to know people are out there who agree with you, support you and can show you that you’re not alone. Those people are here.