Record (Re)Collection: Scott McCloud Of Paramount Styles/Girls Against Boys On Tortoise’s “Millions Now Living Will Never Die”

For this installment of Record (Re)Collection, we’ve got an essay from Scott McCloud, singer/guitarist for Paramount Styles and Girls Against Boys.  In his column, Scott talks about Tortoise’s 1996 full-length Millions Now Living Will Never Die.  Paramount Styles’ debut album Failure American Style is out now via Touch & Go, so be sure to pick it up.

Tortoise-Millions Now Living Will Never Die
By Scott McCloud

I was on a European “press tour” in the winter of 1996; a mission to talk a good game about my band Girls Against Boys’ upcoming House of GVSB album. When I was in Berlin, someone at our German distributor handed me an advance copy of the Tortoise album Millions Now Living Will Never Die. I tucked the thin CD into my travel bag, along with the growing pile, figuring I’d “get to it” eventually (probably never).

A couple mornings later, I was waiting for a flight out of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, an old Nazi-era airport close to the city center.  Dawn was just breaking and I was sitting in a lounge looking out the window at the blue morning light across the tarmac.  Bored, I slipped the CD into my Walkman and hit play.  I don’t know if it was something about the scene being somehow absolutely ideal but when the first few minutes of the first song “Djed” played, it struck me as so perfect to the times, even to the transient setting of the antiquated airport lounge I was sitting in.

Continue reading Scott’s column after the jump!

And the song went on, and on, and on.  Yet, as it shifted from what sounded like analog tape loop slippage, to dub and updated krautrock, I was absolutely captivated.  I nearly missed my flight (the song is almost 21 minutes long).  What I found so compelling about it was the way it seemed futuristic and completely new. Yes, there were some sonic reference points, perhaps, but the way the music was put together was so undeniably fresh, timeless even.

Now Living never left my CD Walkman for the rest of the trip.  It seemed to adapt itself perfectly to any situation I found myself in.  New things were revealed on each subsequent listen.

Of course, in 1996, the world was rapidly approaching the new millennium; an event which was already attaining a level of off hype and anxiety akin to something like the convergence of 1,000 supernova’s hitting Times Square.  Everything was about the future.  Indeed, another brilliant album by Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension, released a short time after, discussed this explicitly.  It was a time when there was an extreme fascination with newness.  And I was listening to a real version of it, in my opinion.  Even that brilliant title: Millions Now Living Will Never Die.  It seemed to speak about this very same thing; some futuristic anxiety.  And it did so without any lyrics at all.  Just space and sound.

Electronica was just getting its name and we were all preparing for the final doomsday rave.  Yet Tortoise’s futurism was somehow more honest, melancholy, and beautiful.  Surprising in unexpected ways.  It could be dark and uplifting at the same time; languorous and yet exciting.  I listened to that CD, as I said, for the rest of my two weeks in Europe, until I just couldn’t take it anymore.  It was so good.

As a postscript, the future did in fact arrive.  The computers didn’t crash.  The raves went on, sure, but a lot of the late 90s music aged rapidly once the bubble of the new millennium popped and we realized it was just another day, another century.  Still, Millions Now Living stands out and stands the test of time, as something truly visionary, something that encourages a new way of listening to and making music.