Summer Stars: Tycho
Once again, the June issue of Relix features our Summer Stars series where we profile those acts making the rounds on the festival circuit this year. To start, we take a look at California ambient outfit Tycho who recently made an appearance at Bonnaroo and will be found at Ottawa Blues, Quebec City, Pemberton, North Coast Festival and more later this year.
For an ambient rock band that shares its name with a crater on the moon and is named after a 16th-century Danish astronomer, Tycho is surprisingly down-to-earth. Northern California native Scott Hansen is the man behind the music, and while his work is usually described as electronic, he wants people to know such a classification can belie the actual music that it describes.
With his live band that includes bass guitarist Zac Brown (not the country rocker) and drummer Rory O’Connor, Hansen has defied the expectations of both audiences and friends as to what electronic music can be. “I think a lot of people make the mistake that if music sounds electronic, then it’s like DJ music, or they don’t really know where it came from. A lot of people I know are like, ‘Oh, I heard you were spinning this weekend at Coachella,’” he laughs. “And I’m like, ‘I think you’re very confused about what it is that I do.’”
What he does create is dreamy, expansive sonic landscapes with backbeats that range from lazy and meandering to downright dancy. Before 2011’s Dive, when Hansen says he really began to get serious about his music, he was a freelance graphic designer whose musical output was, as he puts it, “bedroom-producer, in-your-spare-time stuff.” And while Hansen still maintains his alter-ego as accomplished photographer and graphic designer ISO50, the world is increasingly coming to know him as Tycho.
When Hansen was planning to tour behind Dive, he decided to change things up and detour from his previous live outings as a solo, laptop-toting electronica artist. “I didn’t feel comfortable trying to represent the music in the live context without bringing the process to the forefront—showing people this is how it’s made,” he says. And after adding Brown and O’Connor to the mix, the trio congealed into a unit, which, in turn, paid off when it was time to make the next album, last year’s mind-expanding Awake. After spending six years writing and producing Dive, Hansen and his bandmates brought Awake together in eight months, even with an increased touring schedule. “At my core, I’m a producer and a songwriter,” Hansen explains. “But when you’re the only songwriter and you’re producing yourself, it can become like a feedback loop, and a little bit one-note at times.”
With all the band members contributing to the writing and recording process of Awake, the preparation for this current tour was considerably easier, and the collaborative nature of the process shines through in the live show. “It’s a much more enjoyable experience to be onstage and to do the performance that way, and that translates into the performance— people pick up on that,” he says.
When it comes to festivals, as opposed to regular gigs, Hansen says, “If the other ones are training, [festivals are] the real deal.
“The whole thing is basically: Jump onstage, go, play now, finish now. You can’t screw around, you can’t waste any time,” he explains. “It’s definitely different in that respect, but it’s fun and exciting because it’s a test of the skills that you’ve been building, playing at club shows all year.”
But, in the end, it’s all worth it. “Whatever you spend in stress, you get back tenfold from the fact that there’s just so many people there. I feel like we’re lucky—our audience and our fans always give a lot back, so you feel comfortable up there.”
