Awake
Low-lit grooves meet high drama in the swooshing, swirling ambient-ish music of Tycho. The Bay Area producer’s fourth album *Awake* mixes layered guitar strum, electric bass, and electronic wash with beats that are chilled-out but emphatic too. The panoramic title track starts the show in a melancholy mood that soon progresses toward brightness (“Montana”) and, in time, drifting serenity (“Dye”). Gripping melodies and loud-quiet dynamics cribbed from post-rock set up a sense of suspense teased out in deft and diverging instrumentals, each of which seems to tell a story of its own.
On Awake, Scott Hansen, the San Francisco-based visual artist who records colorful techno as Tycho, expands his sound. It's the first Tycho album recorded as a three-piece band, and his previous albums now sound like mere dreams of the luminous world he was trying to create.
San Francisco producer strikes a perfect balance of being memorable and addictive without being cloying or laboured.
If you’re a fan of Tycho, the electronic pop project headed up by erstwhile photographer/graphic designer Scott Hansen, you…
The variations within Tycho's music have always been subtle, hovering between ambient introspection and more active synth pop and post-rock elements.
While on tour in support of 2011's Dive, Scott Hansen (a.k.a. Tycho) added guitarist Zac Brown (no, not that Zac Brown) and Nitemoves (a.k.a. Rory O'Connor) on drums to help give his synth-layered space jams a textural third dimension.
Scott Hansen, the mastermind behind Tycho, was first a graphic designer, and he still balances his visual work with his growing reputation as a musician.