Jonathan Lee, Salon, 13 December 1999

"Free of lyrical limitations, San Francisco's Tarentel channel the meditative power of music into audio cinema."

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, a prehistoric man launches a bone high into the sky. The bone spins through the air and, with a brilliant associative cut, the scene jumps to a space station rotating among the stars. Beginning with a gesture and ending with a stretch of the imagination, Stanley Kubrick creates an indelible metaphor for human possibility and achievement. The five members of the San Francisco band Tarentel were so impressed by Kubrick's vision that they named their first full-length album, From Bone to Satellite, after the scene.

Tarentel -- named after the tarantella, the Italian folk dance -- draw from experimental and avant-garde music and film scores of the '70s. Their cinematic music is entirely instrumental; song titles are the only words used by the band. While lyrics are limited by vocabulary, music can elicit a meditative experience that listeners can use to conjure their own images. With a dialogue of instruments spanning five tracks and 74 minutes, Tarentel sketch man as lonely cowboy, nervous and astrological dreamer. If the album falls short of the stars, the band lands on its feet with confidence.

"Steede Bonnet" captures the pride of a wandering cowboy in the wilderness as Jefre Cantu's pulsing six-string weaves in and out of a fumbling guitar and percussion drone. The track recalls the wistful spirit of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti-Western scores, most notably Once Upon a Time in the West.

"When We Almost Killed Ourselves" and "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major" alternate between anxiety and passivity, whispery guitar and noisy bravado. Even at their loudest, Tarentel refrain from overindulging; their music always returns to a sobering dreaminess.

Using sounds instead of words, sympathy rather than empathy, the album is an impressive debut that explores the hope and fears of man. Paradoxically, its ambition ultimately becomes its weakness: Extended passages of instrumental tomfoolery can wear on any listener.

Still, "For Carl Sagan," the album's centerpiece, evokes the curiosity, discovery and excitement of anyone who has dared to dream. It's a breathtaking epic that concludes in spectacular fashion, chilling with every cymbal crush. The composition swells with passion and optimism, an ode to one man and everyman - those whose imaginations have changed bones into satellites.

Jim Haynes, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 12 January 2000

"Cosmology and dronology"

An enthusiasm for sound marks San Francisco avant-rock group Tarentel. Their investigations engage the more interesting elements of indie rock and deep space dronology. Their earliest incarnation, as a three-piece whose members awkwardly changed instrumentation during their sparse live sets, betrayed their inclination toward the slowcore of Low or Codeine. But Tarentel's innate gravitation toward filling empty spaces with lush tapestries of sound (an opposite proclivity to the Spartan behavior of Low) shared more than a passing resemblance to the Martin Hannett production on Joy Division and the Factory bands of the early '60s.

In a brief history spanning a few EPs and the recent debut album From Bone to Satellite (Temporary Residence Ltd.), Tarentel have been continuously asking questions not only of their own sound but also of their influences. Each of their releases has capitalized on the strengths of previous outings and shown them learning from their mistakes, resulting in a sound that successfully incorporates and moves beyond sonic references to godspeed you black emperor!, Village of Savoonga, Zoviet France, and even Karlheinz Stockhausen.

From Bone to Satellite is an elegant orchestration of five instrumental pieces (seven, if you pick up the double LP). Shape-shifting songs of indie dynamism move through slippery changes in intensity, meter, and time signatures. The album opens with "Steede Bonnet," a lugubrious spaghetti western with simple, majestic guitar chords chiming against a ghostly ambience. "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major" reveals both Tarentel's fascination with deep space objects and the sonic architecture of the song. Beginning with a metronomic tinkering of coyly plucked guitars and bass, Tarentel slow the tempo down for a churning guitar blast. But the album's centerpiece is the 20-minute epic "For Carl Sagan." Out of a simple progression, Tarentel's multiple guitars build a slow radioluminescent glow, burying the initial melody in a textured miasma of feedback and dissonance. Instead of lulling off in cosmic ambience, "For Carl Sagan" erupts with the controlled explosion of a perfectly timed chord change.

From Bone to Satellite was recorded almost a year ago, and Tarentel's questioning nature has brought changes to their now exceptional live sets. The departure of bassist Kenseth Thibideau allowed Tarentel's palette to expand with Trevor Montgomery on guitar and Jeff Rosenberg on PowerBook, bass, guitar, and additional percussion. In their current live sets it's common to hear lengthy drone work from blissful guitar reverb and tape loops, caustic organ samples and electronic beats from Rosenberg's computer, and the structures of their recorded work entirely rearranged. Guitarist Jefre Cantu-Ledesma explains, "We don't want to get bored playing our songs. For the bass line that Kenseth brought to ‘Ursa Major,’ Jeff has rewritten the part for his laptop giving the song a whole new dimension. We like the idea of constantly revamping our sound. It makes it more interesting to keep going."

To Cantu-Ledesma, this constant evolution parallels the ever shifting cosmos. Yet Tarentel's fascination with black holes, constellations, and other deep space objects is firmly grounded here on Earth. From this observation point they are able to express their wonder of the universe. On Jan. 20 the rest of us will be able to experience this wonder. A lunar eclipse will occur in the eastern sky in the early evening. If you need a soundtrack to the event, look no further than Tarentel.

surface vs. depth, March 2000

If a song is going to breach the 10 minute mark it better have a damn good reason, or there'll be trouble. This album has 5 tracks in 74 minutes, now that should tell you something right? Yes, this record is important, this record has gravitas, this record means something. Right, or maybe it's just plain boring. In places From Bone To Satellite is quite nice, sounds a bit like godspeed you black emperor! y'know, if you hadn't already guessed. But lets be honest, you've heard this before, from godspeed to Mogwai via Dave Pajo. It feels accomplished but doesn't really seem to have an identity of it's own, and post rock is a pretty crowded market these days. In the time it took for these 5 tracks to meander past, I could have played Squirrel and G-Man and Richard D James Album instead, and had time to spare.If you want another post rock album then yeh go buy it, don't let me stop you, but that's all this is. Another post rock album.

Ryan Muldoon, PUNCHLiNE: Richmond’s Weekly Urban Manifest, Issue #93, 18-24 May 2000

"Instru-Mental Institution: The Latest in ‘Instrumental’ Releases" (excerpt)

It’s obvious we need some new terms. Simply describing a band as "instrumental" isn’t doing the trick, what with so many bands creating odd, esoteric, even catchy tunes out of a previously maligned form. It’s an unnamed revolution being forged in the most unlikely of places, like Maryland. The Temporary Residence Ltd. is a label that has been releasing consistently challenging and beautiful music for some time now, though without the deserved fanfare. It may be an insurmountable challenge to apply descriptive writing to these sounds that are often so indescribable, but we can help with the fanfare part (cue trumpets!). The shiniest jewel in the TRL crown thus far must be Tarentel. Epic to the extreme, the San Francisco band’s first full length release, From Bone To Satellite, should find favor with fans of Mogwai, specializing in a similar (though not derivative) form of instrumental. But Tarentel stands out by taking Casey Kasem’s advice and reaching for the stars. Beyond the 2001: A Space Odyssey allusion in the album title, there’s the twenty minute centerpiece "For Carl Sagan," which follows the only slightly shorter (but no less amazing) "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major." Tarentel maneuver effortlessly between subtle Morricone-esque soundscapes and explosive, sustained guitar surges that would put a sloppy grin on the face of Kevin Shields. Both minimal and monstrous, Tarentel sound like musical astronomers with stompboxes, and they’re not afraid to use them.

Nick McDermott, Pillowfight, 29 May 2000

It's really hard to stand out on the tightly packed post-rock playing field these days. There are just so many bands recording albums in a genre that looks to have come very close to running out of steam several times in the past few years, while only managing to keep sputtering on thanks to some truly great releases from a much smaller number of bands.

From the Kranky label's minimalism to Thrill Jockey's jaded jazz set and on to the arty pretensions of a sizable number of the Jade Tree bands, post-rock is by no means a limiting moniker to get pinned with. At the same time, however, most of the more mediocre bands that happen to find themselves being hit with the tag tend to fall into a more confined subset of the sound.

It's a subset populated by Pele, Turing Machine, Paul Newman, and the like. I don't mean to imply that these are the bottom-of-the-barrel bands, but quite the opposite actually. These groups' recent releases, while each pretty good, prove just how hard it is to stand out no matter how talented or experienced the band may be.

Tarentel is another band that, while certainly a few steps closer to the Kranky aesthetic (i.e. godspeed you black emperor!, Labradford, Low, etc.), can certainly be lumped in with Pele and the rest at times. More orchestrated perhaps, but in spirit and in sound the tendencies are still present. Their new album From Bone to Satellite is built around five songs that add up to an hour and thirteen minutes of instrumental visions of a very blurry cosmos.

While the track names evoke images of physics experiments ("Strange Attractors") and astronomy lessons ("For Carl Sagan" and "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major"), the songs are much more level-headed in that they are founded on fairly standard rock instrumentation. The sound changes from lugubrious to energetic and back once or twice over the course of each track, and the contrasts within songs are actually much stronger then those between songs.

The first songs opens, like many of the others, with shimmering guitar, barely audible, and doesn't really do much else for the next five minutes, but then things open up fairly quickly and for the next seven things wax and wane in all sorts of interesting ways. It was somewhere during this time on my third or fourth listen to the album that I started to appreciate Tarentel for the first time. Prior to that the album felt very much like a chore: boring, weighty, and tedious. A few listens later still though and I'm perfectly happy to admit that this is pretty good CD.

The second track, "When We Almost Killed Ourselves," makes its point much more bluntly than the first. We are only given a few seconds of atmosphere before the guitars begin to crunch and the music starts in earnest. This continues for a while and for the first time on the album the band is rocking.

The fun really starts on track three though. This one, "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major," is a full seventeen minutes long, but it's hard to mind. There are so many changes and shifts that it's really tough to believe that this one isn't three or four different songs. If it were though, the first would be my favorite. Lot's of engaging percussion thanks to Kenseth Thibideau's kalimba, which really livens things up in an unusual way. The second part of the song hits hard and quickly with just under twelve minutes remaining and we are again swept into the sphere of that mathy/quirky part of post-rock where so many bands like to hide out these days.

Tarentel need not hide out though; they have made the little rut a slightly nicer place to be stuck in. I'd be hard-pressed to say that they are going to be making a major impact anytime soon, but I'd like to hope that that's not really the point. As it is, if they continue to get better and grow as a band then I'll just have to keep on recommending their records. And if you see what you are getting into and don't mind - because five songs over seventy-four minutes isn't easy for everyone - then I certainly do recommend this one.

Dave Christensen, fakejazz, Issue 2, 16 June 2000

This is a record I was almost certain that I would not like at all. A very long player by heady San Francisco band on a post-dork label, with an opaque name and spacey sounding titles: all pretension and no fun makes for a dull 74 minutes, especially when its distributed over a mere five tracks. Fortunately for me and for you, this record knocked me flat on my big fat ass. With each subsequent listen, my ass just keeps getting flatter.

True, the songs are long (the shortest clocks in at a whopping ten full earth minutes, the longest at over twenty) and the music can be very spacey and ambient. But its effects are accomplished with skill and care. This is not another lazy, new age band hopping on the post-rock bandwagon with a lot of bland noodling , cheap synths, and vibes. Despite the length of the songs, they never get dull. Rather, they need that time and space to evolve and develop through each of their stages.

At first I thought of godspeed you black emperor!, another band which makes long, slowly shifting epics that rise to ecstatic heights and fall to plunging depths. To be honest, there is a definite similarity in the physicality of the music, yet Tarentel is working a whole other vibe. Where godspeed you black emperor! overwhelms you with their passion and madness, Tarentel reaches inside of you and turns you inside out.

"Steede Bonnet" starts with atmospheric hums and drones, muted plunks and peeps. Out of this rises singing synths, simple arpeggios, sliding bass and a frenetic, repetitive strum. They lay track upon track until it feels as if you are completely enveloped in sound, like a bubble. Each instrument bears you up in a way that keeps you afloat but perfectly still. After about four minutes of this when the main melodic theme emerges, it rises from the din like an epiphany, and then, finally, you begin to rise with it.

It's not all transcendence and nice. In fact, each track is very unique. "When We Almost Killed Ourselves" bursts open with sharp, jabbing riffs of dissonant guitar lines, pummeling drums and some dark, rumbling noise before breaking down into phased pulses and a more reflective tone, provided clean guitars and spare bass. "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major" starts off hyper and highly rhythmic, full of quick harmonics and layers of tickity-tick percussion, laid on thick and fast until it crumbles into a pile of huge, distorted guitar globs, which, in turn, slides back into a laidback version of the opening segment and so forth and so forth. (OK, I have one complaint: "Carl Sagan" is way too long. It sounds a bit like Mogwai: pretty song builds in intensity to be overtaken by a huge roar of noise. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but Mogwai would have executed this in about half of the twenty-one minutes devoted to it on From Bone to Satellite.)

The songs seem simple despite all of the instrumentation and shifts. Perhaps simple is not the right word, but it feels like the right one. That is not to say that the songs are obvious or predictable, but that the music is never incomprehensible or too complex for its own good. Tarentel is a very unique band in that they can balance their ambition with effective composition and musicianship. The result is calculated and difficult to achieve, but, like those who are best at what they do, they make it feel natural and easy.

rating: 10/12

Cafebliss, Issue 4, August 2000

*****
Well, I told you how great their EP was ages ago and this debut full length is even better than that little beauty. It's one of those albums that seems to get better and better, each time I listen to it I seem to hear something new or get engrossed deeper than before. Over the course of 74 minutes you get five songs, each one lengthy but never dull and that's even after taking the minimallity into account. It's true that nothing much happens on some songs, well things happen but they are then generally drawn out in loops of repetitive beauty. Opening with the 12 minute laid back haziness of "Steede Bonnet," it cruises slowly out of the starting blocks. The drone backing compliments the slowly building guitar lines, all mixing together to form an almost trancelike state, with an odd western film soundtrack slant that would do Godspeed proud or even the rejuvenated Mogwai. Next up is the wonderfully titled "When We Almost Killed Ourselves". Far more brash than the other four songs on show, here we have a true look at the rockier math rock side of the band as they twist and twirl through some sharp guitar moments, maybe Slint meets Fugazi meets Jane's Addiction (well the last one's just my ears) but you may get an idea what I mean. "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major" knocks the volume back down a peg or two with some wonderful bass picking and tight drums it's almost Tortoise like and clocks in at around seventeen minutes. "For Carl Sagan" starts out on a mournful picked guitar line it that goes straight down my spine, you know when certain songs just stop you and demand attention ?, others can't see why but this is one of them for me, a bit like Sigur Ros' "????" perhaps it a certain chord or something but it gets me every time. Slowly it glides on this minimal refrain, neither growing or getting less it just goes on, and on until eventually the bass arrives to add some touches of class at precisely the right moment, as cymbals roll it all sort of evolves like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly or something, finally taking flight and getting to the loud bit as all the best songs do. Closing with "Strange Attractors," another loud twisting start, taught and hypnotising it breaks down halfway through and goes all odd. Everything goes and you just get the sound of clicking plectrums, then all hell breaks loose as it goes all out mental, a bit Sonic Youth-ish even ?. Anyway, it really is a great album, not for everyone for sure but if you like yer post rock and instrumental epics you can't go wrong here. Bloody marvellous !!

Eric J. Herboth, Lost At Sea

This is quite a little work of music, yes. I'd heard a Tarentel track on someone's mix tape last summer, but the song I remembered was much more dissonant-rock ala Sonic Youth via My Bloody Valentine than what I am hearing out of this full length. These songs all lean towards more of a stripped-down orchestra kind of feel overall...but that isn't to say there aren't some rock inspired moments here and there, I just can't seem to remember where they were. You see, making sense of or assessing a "review" to this record is akin to the daily chore of finding my car keys. I never know where I put them, but I can picture them in my mind sitting...somewhere in the house. But this house is so goddamn big, you see, that I just walk from room to room hoping to accidentally stumble into them. I start out searching staunchly, eliminating every shelf, couch, table and box in the living room from my mental check list. Then on to the dining room, where I do the same. But I still haven't found the key (that's sort of a metaphor) and so I move on to the kitchen and then upstairs. But by the time I'm looking in my bedroom the search downstairs seems like a distant memory, my mental checklist scrambled. Did I really look on the mantle down there? Argh!

And that is how this record goes. It's too big to digest at once, so expansive that you lose yourself in the dissection of it. You can sit through "Steede Bonnet" and try and take it all in, but a few tracks later the bass of "Ursa Minor, Ursa Major" is rolling you like a kayak in a hurricane, tossing around your mental grip on things. You try to steady yourself, but you can't seem to do it. Hell, even if you could, you're only half way through it all.

This record could turn out to be a masterpiece after weeks of listening, if I ever make it that far. Or it could simply be too huge in scope and sound for my wee brain to handle and I may succumb, nose bleeding, to it's might...in which case I'll just enjoy the spacious photography, which is the most tasteful use of the color black I've seen in a while.

Truckfighter

Without a single song clocking in under 10 minutes you know you're in for some Tarentel. Without the slightest ounce of respect for conventional rock-structures in time and form they could easily be labeled as post-rock. But the very diverse face of Tarentel deserves a better faith than just being another post-rock band. The first song on the CD, called "Steede Bonnet" reminds me strongly of the melodies of Ennio Morricone and his disciples in godspeed you black emperor! with its epic and almost sentimental lead-melody. The second track starts off with a noisy dischordant Sonic Youth-ish riff but changes pace to become a slow, soft and very emotional tune. That’s a good thing about Tarentel, they’re not afraid to smash that distortion box, and they're absolutely not afraid to be economic and minimalistic, often a single chord could be used for great period of time and many times the repeating melodies takes an almost trance-like effect. The 20 minute long "For Carl Sagan" is a good example of how a song doesn't need more than one or two riffs to reach emotional peaks like no Mineral-song ever will. The album will definitely appeal to the growing number of people who likes the sounds of Mogwai. And if you're interested, I made an interview with Tarentel a few months ago. Be sure to check out both the interview as well as this brilliant album.

David McGurgan, Yakuza

(San Francisco's Tarentel deliver five tracks of exquisite meandering on From Bone To Satellite. Great drones that stretch out, explore and conquer both inner and outer space. For fans of godspeed you black emperor!, Do Make Say Think, Slow Loris.)

Sure, Tarentel shares many of the same musical maneuvers as godspeed you black emperor! and Tortoise, but the quality of Tarentel's neo-space jams are every bit as good as those aforementioned bands. On their album From Bone to Satellite, Tarentel ventures out into previously untraveled musical terrain with extended musical explorations that are ambient, full of textures, and sublime.

There are five tracks here, and the whole album clocks in at well over an hour in length. But it's really unfair to pick out any one particular moment of From Bone to Satellite, as its strength lies in its ability to exist as a complete musical statement. You may hear a bass riff that sounds like Tortoise and maybe some climaxes that rival gybe!, but it's difficult to attribute words to the majority of Tarentel's music. And that is a good thing.

Guitars are content to shimmer and build up from quiet reverberations into loud repetitious riffs, and the rhythm section doesn't overdo it, but plays an appropriate understudy to the group's sonic explorations. The restraint Tarentel shows and the dynamics they exhibit are often ruined in the hands of the inept, but in this group's case, they show that they have nearly mastered the genre of so-called "space rock."