News Track By Track: Tycho - Awake

Trust Scott Hansen to explore. The Ghostly International signed producer, better known as Tycho, spends most of his time outdoors taking photographs under the ISO50 guise. Aside from that, he’s holed up in a studio producing music that’s often pegged in as ambient but ultimately has way more to give than a muse for deep introspection.

New album ‘Awake’ - out 17th March on Ghostly - explores driven basslines, trip-hop influences and even slight doses of hip-hop in its pursuit for something indefinable. Instrumental all the way through, the follow-up to 2011 LP ‘Dive’ represents a renewed desire to look outwards instead of channelling sources of comfort.

We’ve given Scott the space to explain his new album a week ahead of release. Stream the LP and check out his track-by-track guide below the player.

Pre-order ‘Awake’ via ISO50 here.



Awake
‘Awake’ represents a centerpoint for me. It draws on some of the cues from the previous record but leans toward the newer sound of a lot of the tracks on the album. This was an interesting track as it sort of materialized out of nowhere. I had recorded Zac just kind of messing around on guitar between takes from another song. We didn’t think much of it but a couple months later I found the clip when working on another track and it kind of clicked. I think I was up until about 7am building a song around that initial guitar part. It all happened very quickly, the song was pretty much done that night.

Montana
This was our foray into a more driven sound. We spent a lot of time on the road during the ‘Dive’ tour cycle and I wanted to evoke the idea of travelling through these open spaces. This was initially a kind of meandering synth / guitar jam and we worked on various versions for the better part of the album recording process. It wasn’t until near the end when Rory came in to track drums that this song really came to life. His drumming on this song was the glue for the arrangement and went a long way to making the three main themes feel cohesive.

L
This was another song that materialized very quickly from a moment of inspiration. It was also the first song I wrote for the record. I ended up creating an edit of this song for the game Hohokum. It was really fun working with the developer and seeing how they would slowly build the elements of the song as you moved through the levels.

Dye
This may be my favorite song on the album. It started as a pretty heavy synth piece, which ended up being the middle part. Sometime towards the end of recording I was playing around with bass and guitar ideas and the end part finally came together, which I feel like best embodies the sound I was going for with this record.

See
I think this song gives a nod to the sound of the last record in a way but kind of taken to another place. The second half is that kind of massive wind­tunnel sound I was going for with a lot of the stuff on ‘Dive’ in a way. The first half I feel has a darker sound with a kind of disco vibe to it. I think this is probably the most emotive song in terms of melody.

Apogee
I was heavily influenced by hip-­hop and sample based artists like DJ Shadow when I was starting out and I think this song is a nod towards that. I wanted to get back to a heavier sound with the drums on this record and I think this is where that started to come together.

Spectre
I’ve always loved drum and bass music and so it eventually finds it’s way into something on every album. This was meant to be the darkest, heaviest track on the album. I took a lot of Rory’s drums and chopped them up and processed them like samples to get that sound. This started out as just a short guitar piece I did which became the middle part. I added the front and back parts but it ended up actually being on the list of tracks that probably weren’t going to make the cut for the album but then Zac recorded those rhythmic guitar parts at the beginning and end it it really tied the whole thing together.

Plains
I had been working with this idea for quite a while but never really found a spot for it. It really felt like a fitting end to this record. I liked how ‘Dive’ ended with ‘Elegy’, which was exactly what it was; laying to rest a period in my life as an artist, paying respects and moving on. That’s what I feel ‘Plains’ is to this record. But whereas ‘Elegy’ represented a present reflection on the end, ‘Plains’ kind of moves past it and looks more to the future I think.