First Post-Dive/Awake Tycho track - Division

TYCHO - Elsewhere Burning Man 2015 Set

Tracklisting:

High Tides ~ ~ ~ Chillwave

High Tides self-titled 1st release is some very relaxing tropical/coastal sounding chillwave (in the vein of Tycho) with a touch of TOBACCO's Psychrock and some wonderful nowave styled looping mixed in.



The pre-release tracks (Coastal Cruise '86, and Sunware) compromised my go-to soundtrack this summer, and I can't recommend High Tides enough:



Five of the tracks even have custom music videos that use recycled vintage 8mm-style beach videos from the 1960s-1980s to further shape the beach aesthetic High Tides flows with. It's a nice touch.

Interestingly enough, some early versions of the tracks are available on a near-forgotten Soundcloud account, but have been primarily released through Rad Cult (Tobacco's label) on their Soundcloud.

The only substantial presence this has is on BandCamp - so go buy this now, as it's worth appreciating in levels beyond the 128k MP3 preview quality.

Deconstruction of the track TYCHO - Awake

Interview with the artist where he desconstructs how the title track from his album "Awake" was made. Really interesting stuff.

Tycho - Awake Album

Via NPR:

The instrumental music San Francisco's Scott Hansen makes as Tycho splits the difference between post-rock's melodic architecture and pop ambient's immersive, uplifting environments. Hansen's aims felt a little harder to grasp on the sprawling Dive, the 2011 predecessor of his fourth album as Tycho, Awake. The latter is a slickly constructed album that finds him streamlining both his setup and his aims — the sounds he uses and how he deploys them are more considered and purposeful. 

Awake is focused on the dynamic between driving rhythms that wouldn't be out of place in M83's '80s-worshipping work and the stargazing romanticism of Ulrich Schnauss. In all of these songs, electric bass and live drums are locked on cruise control as litanies of guitar and Minimoog lines peel off in divergent, kaleidoscopic patterns. Things never crystallize into narrative song structures, but Tycho never loses the plot, offering the listener a steady succession of thematically united vignettes. In contrast to both the tension-and-release tactics employed by the likes of Mogwai and the wintry narcolepsy of Kompakt's Pop Ambient compilations, this succinct album — clocking in at just under 40 minutes — contents itself with being a seamless, vaguely melancholic reverie. 

Awake humbly suggests itself as the soundtrack to a sunbaked road trip, capturing the inexplicable nostalgia you feel imagining a new life in a new town glimpsed from the highway. Transitions within and between individual tracks take place so smoothly they register mostly as changes in atmospheric pressure rather than plot points. So when the album concludes with the floating "Plains," there's a nagging sense that it has done so prematurely. Music often requires some acclimatization before it can be fully appreciated. In Tycho's case, it's returning to the real world that takes effort.

The full album can be streamed from the NPR posting, found here.

Update: 

The full album is available for streaming/purchase links on SoundCloud:

Interview: Tycho - Awake

There's an interesting interview out with Tycho (Scott Hansen) at The Fader.

Tycho is one of the few electronic artists I've followed since my university days. It's interesting to read about his changing approach to his music, in particular the difference between the production of 'headphone music' with what he called an "instagram" approach - and the cleaner, higher fidelity band-centric approach of his new record. Having experienced Tycho live in Toronto last year, I'm excited about this new approach.

I've always found Hansen's music very introspective, like you're drifting through positive - if sombre - memories. It was interesting to read in the interview above Hansen's comments about his music in this sense:

"...one of the beauties of instrumental music is that it doesn't define, it implies. I try to use the music as a framework for you to transpose your own emotions onto it, just like you've articulated it."



 
I'm really enjoying the new tracks he's posted on SoundCloud (above). If you're new to Tycho's music, I'd strongly suggest picking up his previous album, Dive.

   

On a related point, I used a few of Tycho's tracks in a mixed set I made 2012.  Download here, or listen below. If you like his music, check out the track list of the mixset for similarly sounding music.