By Jesse Cataldo

Any musician who dares to venture out into the world without the help of lyrics is truly a brave soul. Most good music relies on a delicate symbiosis between lyrics and music. Tortoise made the decision to go (voiceless) years ago, releasing a string of successful albums and managing to successfully straddle the line between post rock and ambient techno. It’s All Around You is the first time they’ve presented us with something that is significantly lacking, both in content and presentation. One can only help but think-if someone were singing, something, anything, it might be easier to keep listening.

The biggest problem with It’s All Around You is the fact that it sounds so tediously routine and overproduced. Over the years, Tortoise has become more and more stiff sounding, the warmth that inhabited previous albums such as Standards and TNT has all but faded to a single spark. It’s a sad feeling, like watching a close friend turn into a robot. Not an evil, treacherous robot bent on destruction, but a lazy, boring one who spends all of his time lying on the couch.

It’s All Around You takes a step toward redemption with “Dot/Eyes,” the most fluid and dynamic song on the album. A shuddering synth curl gives way to galloping drums and powerful, choppy drum beats, which battle with a latent explosion of noise and random voice clippings.

Sadly, the bulk of the music here is less like “Dot/Eyes” and more like the “The Lithium Stiffs,” which sounds so clean and calculated that it’s no fun to listen to. The song is pushed along by a series of soothing “aahs” emanating from the cold depths of a keyboard. Surprisingly, these are actually recorded vocal tracks, yet the processing of them through the keyboard leaves them virtually indistinguishable from the stock sound that comes with your standard Casio keyboard.

And that’s where the problem lies. The warmth and spontaneity that characterized Tortoise’s earlier sound has been eaten by machines. The result is ten cold, sterile tracks that sound as fake as the cover art looks.