Tycho
Dive
San Francisco, CA
“Beautiful foray into the natural and unnatural”
Maybe it’s the beautifully designed cover art of a sun conjoining with a mountainous plateau, but a sincere feeling of warmth should envelop anyone that’s listening closely to Dive, the startlingly refreshing new release from San Francisco-based graphic designer and electronic artist Scott Hansen, aka Tycho.
With Dive, Hansen isn’t just mechanically crafting IDM tunes. Synths go through a wide variety of different filters, at times sparking off bitcrushed melodies that seem like burning stars colliding with one another. At other times, the notes are crystal clear and complemented wonderfully by traditional instruments like a bright acoustic guitar, which stands out beautifully among electronic textures.
This isn’t electronic music that just paints the picture of someone in their bedroom hunched over a laptop and MIDI keyboard. While there are some of those elements present, the traditional instruments work incredibly well with the synths and keyboards to create a lovely synergy.
The title track “Dive” is an eight-minute representation of what this album essentially is: a seamless spiral of meticulously-arranged soundscapes and rhythms, which work well on their own, but when presented together, evoke a wonderful image of sunshine and the breeze that comes when it momentarily hides behind the clouds.
This is what real art sounds like. (Ghostly International)
Recorded by S. Hansen
Mixed by Count & S. Hansen
Mastered by Count
Additional Production by Dusty Brown and Matt McCord