No Filler Music Podcast - Ep 02: Tycho - Dive

Episode Date: January 27, 2018

Tycho's second studio album ​"Dive" is reviewed, and we explore how music is so closely tied to memory and nostalgia with a discussion of the term hypnagogic pop and how it applies to the chillwave genre. For more information, check out the show notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/tycho-dive Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get a nice rank on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no, but chicken tenders, yes. because those are groceries, and we deliver those too, along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. My name is Travis. And I'm Quentin. And here's something you might want to know about the two of us.

No, no, no, no. I got you, dude. I got you. I got you. That does sound dumb. I'm done it. And welcome to No Filler, a music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. In each episode, we'll dive into a little history of the artist and the album of choice with snippets from interviews and concerts as well as music from the album itself. My name is Travis, and with me as always is my brother Quentin. Today, we are talking about Tycho's second studio album, Dive.

And I think it's safe to say that Tyco is one of my favorite electronic musicians. Definitely my favorite ambient chill wave musician. That's what he is sometimes classified as. And I think you would say the same, right, Q? Ambient chill wave, yeah. Well, as far as him being one of your favorite electronic musicians, Absolutely. Yeah. Especially, yeah, in this category of electronic music.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think there are a lot of, a lot of musicians out there that have his sound, like that fall under that category. But like he does it better than anyone, I think. I think so too. What I like about his music is just how seamlessly or how. flawlessly he combines elements of electronic

and analog, yeah. You know, or acoustic instruments. He does it so well. And we're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. We're going to dive into the whole thing here. But first. We're going to dive into dive.

We're going to dive. We're going to dive in to dive. Yeah. Yeah. But before we dive, before we climb up on that diving board. Oh my God. I got a new segment for you. it's going to be called don't judge me or don't don't judge us um basically if we said something that was incorrect in the previous episode i want to take a moment to correct it in the beginning

of the next episode uh you know just so we don't misinform our listeners and you know because you know why would you want to own up to your mistake yeah get a little bit to your mistake yeah get own up to it. And if I say, dude, if I say something like the mistakes I'm calling out here were just like misspoke, you know what I mean? But like if I say something that's wrong and a listener tells me otherwise, like that's great, man. That's what I want. We need that. I want to learn. And, you know, especially on things when it comes to to music, you know. Yeah, we're new to this, everyone, okay? We're just stepping out into the podcasting world. We're learning some things. sorry, just got the training wheels fixed.

We don't have our lane legs. We don't have our lane legs yet. So two retractions that I want to make. Number one. Just one. We list, no, we got, I've got two here. The first one being, we listed off like this five pack of grunge bands

that were like the quintessential grunge albums to listen to. And, you know, we said that all of, these bands were from Seattle. That was incorrect. Stone Temple Pilots, one of the bands we mentioned, is from San Diego, California, not Seattle. So, yeah, I feel, there you go. I feel the shame. Yeah, yeah, you should have caught that. Yeah. Second mistake. So, but hey, don't judge us, you know, we make mistakes sometimes. We're humans. Don't judge me. You know, I wasn't even, I think I was relatively sure that the other four were from Seattle, and I just kind of assumed that Stone Tip of Pilots must be from Seattle also.

But boy, was I wrong. Second retraction, our outro track was Black Sabbath into the void. And I mistakenly said that that song was widely considered to be the spawn of Doom Metal, which is a sort of a newer genre. What I meant to say, of course, is that that song spawned Doom Metal. So. Yeah, that's just, you just misspoke, man.

Exactly. But you know what? I want to set the record straight. So that track is considered to be sort of like, you know, the inspiration for, for more slow melodic doom metal that's kind of caught on recently. So anyway, that's that.

Housekeeping aside, let's move on to a more beloved segment, Q, our weekly. What You heard. So what you've been listening to? So I've been getting back into this band that we listened to quite a bit a few years ago. Yeah, I'm not supposed to know. Sorry. What? No, you don't know this, dude.

You don't know how I'm going to say. I saw it on your screen, man. Stop looking at my screen But you know, whatever Yeah So they go by Mr. Twin Sister now They used to be called Twin Sister

It's a band out of New York They've been around since like 2008 or so They're just They're just another one of those dreamy garage pop bands Because god damn it if I'm not on a binge Of this style of music I've been listening to a lot of bands like this there's something they're there's something special though dude they're like they're a cut above i think

they're one of my favorite acts to come out in the last 10 years for sure and that goes for their their show too that was such a great man i mean that show so they weren't even the headliners for that show don't mention the band that we're headlining but they blew them out of the water dude oh absolutely yeah they they they are they're the real deal for sure but yeah this is this to you, this is scary. You know why? No. Because I listened to,

I was listening to Twin Sister yesterday. It's almost like we're twin brothers. I mean, seriously though. Like, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't mention twin sister in the last, in the last recording of this, did we? No, I haven't talked about twin sister with you in a long time. So.

It's almost like we're twin brothers. A couple of, a couple. a couple of twin brothers were listening to twin sister yesterday. That sounds like the start of like a bad joke or something. Yeah. But it's true. I was listening to, um, to, to, to their Mr. Twin sister self-titled album. I actually haven't listened to that. Is it good? You, hold on a minute. You've never listened to it? Nope. Oh my God. You've got to listen to it, man. Your, what you heard is kind of turning into me telling you to listen to something. Yeah, but I'm about to tell you what what Jeff heard.

Which was, I listened. I revisited their EP from, oh shit, I don't remember when this came out. 2010, 2010. 2010, thanks, bro. Yeah. It's called Color Your Life. And this was before they changed their name to Mr. Twin Sister. Yeah.

It's a sixth track EP. I'm going to play track two from Color Your Life. It's called Lady Daydream, and I love this song so much. Yeah, it's good, man. It's solid. That's probably my favorite off the record as well. Yeah, it's really great. So here it is.

They had such a great presence on stage. Yes. Like I said, they're the real deal, dude. As far as their musicianship, their songwriting, That's your homework for this week. You got to listen to Mr. Twin Sister, the self-titled album. It is different, dude.

And like the first track, sensitive, to me, has a baseline and just an overall, like, melody kind of vibe as like a chade

and a, like, a, like, Gino Vanelli in a shoday track put together. What? Yes. It is awesome, dude. Now my interest levels

They're getting peaked Question for you bro Do you know why they change their name? Yeah I do Are you asking me because you don't know? Yeah I don't know Well Did you

So I wrote an article on this I was going to save all of this For whenever we get around to doing an episode on them Because we will Oh we're going to do an episode on twin sister Sure man And probably probably on this Mr. Twin Sister album.

All right, then. Because there's, yeah, there's an interesting story on, um, on what happened to them. Okay. So then, Travis, what you heard this week,

brother. All right. Well, I'm, I'm going to go. Yeah. Well, hang on, dude.

Can I just guess what you're going to say? Yeah. Are you going to say clientele? Woo. Yes, you are. Yeah, you're correct.

How did I know? Because, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm sticking with it. because I got the record showed up yesterday, so I just listened to it all the way through. How is it?

And I just, it's great, man. Yeah. If you're not familiar with them, they're this, I guess they're, they're kind of classified as psychedelic, but it's not, it's not psychedelic in the sense of like a team Impala or, you know,

know, the temples or, yeah, or unknown mortal orchestra, right? It's not like that, psychedelic. I would put them in the 60s pop. Yes. Zombies. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, like Peter Bjorn and John. Yeah, maybe that's just because he sings with an English accent. Well, it's more than that. But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. But anyway, this new album, it's called Music for the Age of Miracles. It came on a couple months back. Again, like his guitar playing is really kind of unique.

It's got a lot of trimolo, which you don't hear used very often, but he does it. It's almost like his signature, and it's, you know, I don't know if there's much of that on this new album, but on their, their, they're kind of their second, their,

their big release that they had was strange geometry. Came out, um, well, when did it come out? Came out in 2005,

which is probably around the time that we saw them, 2005, which is crazy. I never saw them. Thanks for inserting me into your memory, dude.

Sorry, dude. I just figured that you would have been there. That was, uh, I saw them open for spoon. That was a great show. So yeah, the clientele, he's got, he also has a very unique voice.

It's kind of breathy. Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. Yeah, the songs are kind of dreamy. I wouldn't call them dream pop or whatever. But there's just a certain quality about the way he writes songs. And I was happy to hear that. Here's the way that I, here's how I describe clientele. Okay.

If I'm walking through a museum, maybe a modern art museum. And I got some earbuds, clientele. Yeah, all right. I can hear that. And what's funny is most of their album art features fine art on it, Q. Get the fuck out of here, dude. I'm not messing with you. Get out of here.

No. Are you serious? No, I'm serious. I'm not messing with you. Awesome. Yeah. So anyway, my song that we're going to play, it's called Everything You See Tonight,

is different from itself. Yeah, I like that a lot. That was really cool. Yeah, so, you know, kind of Bell and Sebastian a little bit. They got kind of that vibe going on. Absolutely. It's all right.

So I think it's about time we're talking about, I agree. So yeah, I guess just real quick, those songs will be mentioned on the track list on the show notes page for this episode on our website and all forl filler podcast.com and they will make their way onto the Spotify playlist that we compile for this podcast. You can see that as well on on the website. So all right. So let's see. let's talk about Tyco. And I think before we talk about the album, we need to talk about the man behind Tyco, Scott Hanson. The myth, the legend. Yeah, really. So Scott Hansen is Tyco.

It started out as what he called, he called it a laptop project. Right, just more like a hobby, because he already had a career. as a... Yeah, so he has a graphic designer. So Scott Hanson is, and still is, a very talented graphic designer.

He had, you know, some pretty big clients that he was working on, like he did some stuff for Adobe. And he does all of the graphic art for his concert posters, his album artwork. The visuals that you see, if you see him live, it's all him. Like, he does all of it. So, you know, I think that's pretty special.

Yeah. You know. It makes him pretty unique, yeah. Yeah. And I think that adds a whole other level to his live performances because you're, everything that you're witnessing is all Scott Hanson. Yeah. It's all his creation.

So it's all very cohesive and like everything's done with like a purpose behind it as far as like his brand, you know, as it were. But yeah, because he was trained. in graphic design and like branding and stuff like you know it brings it all to to the tycho project which is really he even talks about he approaches music like he approaches art and visuals you know so yeah um so the the origin story as it were for tyco is that he had gotten in some sort of an accident and was stuck at home um he took like a leave of absence to recover from his job and so he was basically at home recovering and

during that time he you know started to focus more on this little side project the music project and you know i gave him enough time to like seriously sit down and try to try to you know make some music and it's then that he realizes that oh i can actually compose you know full-length songs here So he put together some songs, released an EP, he was called The Science of Patterns. And, you know, that was really the moment when he was like, hey, I can actually make something out of this, you know. And so.

Yes. And let's mention that this was 15 years ago, at least, when he started doing this stuff. Because Science of Patterns came out in 2002. And I haven't actually listened to any of the music from that. Have you? It's been years. Is it easily accessible?

it's not on Spotify but you can find it um i'm curious yeah i was looking at i was looking at the track list um like a couple days ago and yeah i i remember listening to all that stuff um i recognize the album cover too yeah and of course you're you're looking at a um scott hanson piece of graphic art there when you look at that cover yeah human condition dream is memory i've yeah i don't know any of this Yeah, I remember listening to it, but it's, I couldn't tell you how they sound. It's been years. But this was 15 years ago, this was definitely just Scott Hanson with a laptop. Oh, yeah.

And like a digital audio software program. Yeah, probably just a laptop and maybe like a MIDI keyboard or something. Yeah. But, yeah, so, you know, the laptop project era of Tyco, I think, lasted through the release of Pastas Prologue, which was his first major release came out in 2006. That's when I was probably introduced to him and his music. And then in between Passus Prolog and Dive, there's about a five-year gap there. And he spent that whole time working on bits and pieces of dive.

he even said so that this was you know this album took six years to make and after I think dive was the first the first album where he it was his full-time gig you know what I mean as far as like yeah he went into it with the full intention of like I'm going to turn this into

my full-time job the graphic design will just be a side thing now so and that's a huge leap to take you know Yeah. Yeah. You always hear the whole starving artist thing. I mean, absolutely. That's you're really taking a risk if you're going to devote your life to making music or making art of some kind.

Right. That's a huge risk. Yeah, definitely. So anyway, let's talk about his sound. You've got an interview where he kind of describes his approach to his, digital effects, right? So yeah, he's got a really unique sound. There's almost no mistaking a Tycho song.

It's this warmth and texture that he creates. To him, the way he describes it, and I'm pulling this from an interview that he did on sound toys, which is a website, that it's like a website for gear nerds for music gear nerds and he said that a lot of the way he approached music he likes to he likes to make music similar to the kind of music that he grew up listening to and i think this would be a good time to mention the genre or subcategory of like electronic pop

music that he kind of falls into. It's a term I hadn't heard before and I thought it was pretty interesting the definition of it. It's a, it's a term called hypnagogic pop. Hypnagogic pop. Hypnagogic pop. Also known as chill wave or glowfi, another term I hadn't heard before. So those are both, they both fall under the umbrella. Yep.

And this is a 21st. century style of pop music or general musical approach, which explores elements of cultural memory and nostalgia by drawing on the music, popular entertainment, and recording technology of past decades, particularly the 1980s. That's Tyco. I always think it's interesting what makes something, what makes music, what makes music nostalgic, what makes brand new music like feel nostalgic, you know what I mean? Because

obviously, if you, for me, if I'm, if I play a video game that I played as a kid, that's nostalgia, right? Yeah. And then if you go back and listen to the soundtrack from that video game. Yeah, absolutely, dude. And that's another thing. Nothing, to me at least, nothing brings me back to a time period. or to a specific moment in my life like music does. I can't hear, I can't hear one, two, three by Gloria Estefan without thinking of being in our din from our childhood home watching that concert that on the VHS that dad recorded of the Gloria Astana.

They're recorded from TV concert. Yeah, whatever it was. Yeah, and same with like, you know, Sonic a headshot. of the state by Blink 1 82. Yeah. I was listening to that earlier this week too, dude. Get out of here. Yeah.

Because I'm getting excited and preparing for the eventual episode that we do on Blink 1282. But anyway, nothing brings me back to a moment in time like music does. So when I listen to Tyco, a brand new Tyco song that I've never heard before, I feel the same feeling. You know what I mean? but it's not like I heard that song when I was five, you know. It's interesting how he can do that because... That's the hypnagogic... Yeah.

...term that you're talking about, where it's like... It's in pieces from... Did you say the cultural memory? Yeah. Yeah. The cultural memory and nostalgia. It's interesting because, you know, although we may have all... had different experiences that we associate with that sound, whatever that particular sound is,

like it makes us nostalgic because it's not, it's a, it's a retro sound, but it's, um, it's brand new, you know. So, so yeah, so he falls under the hypnagogic, uh, nostalgia, um, I guess subcategory of electronic music. Chillwave is a good word to use. But he also uses a lot of kind of down tempo. Like his beats, I would say, are more down tempo than anything. Like, he does a really good job with the drum beats that he uses in his songs, which I think are a huge part of what makes his music stand out, you know?

Yeah. Because he does a great job with the beats, the drumming. So, yeah. So, hey, before we talk more about Scott Hansen and his sound and all that, let's go ahead and play a track, shall we? Yeah, that sounds good. So that everyone can hear kind of what we're talking about here. All right, so the first track that we're going to play is called ours, and it's track number two.

And we've got two clips. I think the first one is just kind of the beginning of the song. So how do you play that cue? Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so here's clip number one. This is track number two. It's called ours, H-O-U-R-S. So I feel like if there was a Tyco 101 course that you could take at like a community college,

that's the song they would play. Yeah, you're right. It's like the signature. That sums up his sound. Yes. The vibes that he's going for. That sums it up right there. Yeah.

And yeah, that's that sound, that main riff, I guess, that's that's being played. That that is the Tyco sound. that he's, you know, cultivated because I don't think we mentioned it yet, but there's that, you know, he mentioned in an interview that, that he treats his effects like instruments. In other words, like, once he tweaks, do we want to play the clip or do we just kind of play that clip, man? All right, yeah, let's let's let, let's let Mr. Scott Hansen tell us about how he approaches effects. Yeah, so here's a, here's a clip from an interview from that, that same website, that, that

same publication called Sound Toys. And this is regarding the fact that he literally has a limitless amount of effects and ways to approach making music with these digital audio programs. And the way that he approaches that, yeah, so here it is. I think, yeah, it was a problem at one point. I think I was in this mode of just like I have to try everything. And slowly I found a set of tools that I was really comfortable with. And I realized, you know, if there's any, even if there's some subtle difference

or even if something I know is superior in some small way, I'll just stick with what I have because I feel like there is something to being limited. And I think when I started out, there weren't any of these options. I didn't even, you know, I started out just using hardware. And I think there was something about that that I missed. And so these days I try to like just say, you know, pretend like this is real gear. All my favorite software, pretend like that's a piece of hardware that I own and that's what I have. And that's what I'm going to use.

And I try to keep it pretty tight. But that being said, I'm always, it's, you know, always looking for new stuff if somebody's coming out with something interesting that does something better or improves the workflow. Yeah, I love that. It really is true. for me as a drummer too sometimes I'll purposely remove a piece from my kit to force myself to be more creative

and this is I think that's what he's kind of part of what he's saying here he'll purposely limit himself and treat these effects like their physical instruments that he owns so that yeah so that there's not limitless possibilities and it does force you

to be more creative. Yeah, well, kind of in the same, along the same vein. Q, have you seen the documentary? It might get loud? I don't think so. So it's, it's Jack White of White Stripes. Oh. Does the first, the first scene, is that like he's sitting down with fucking Edge from YouTube?

Yeah, well, yeah. That's the, it's Edge from YouTube, YouTube. Ed's from U2. Yeah. Jimmy Page from Zeppelin and Jack White from White Stripes. They basically get in a room and talk about their approach to guitar playing,

their history, and then they do these jam sessions. He talks about, so Jack White is famous for playing that plastic red guitar that he got out of a Macy. The JCPenney guitar, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right. J.C. Piner and Macy's catalog.

Or C. Anyway, he talks about how like, he you know he he he doesn't want to just buy a new guitar because with this instrument it's like a struggle you know and he likes the struggle of having to fight it that's what he said you know you got to fight it to make it sound

the way you want it to sound you know what I mean and it contributes to the to his sound you know especially white stripes the gritty you know blues rock that he he does so well. Yeah, he does it better than anyone alive right now. If he were to switch guitars, I don't think Elephant or some of those other albums would have sounded the same. Absolutely, they wouldn't have. So anyway, to tie back to Tyco, I think that's cool that he does that. You know what I

mean? Because yeah, if he, like he said, you know, even if this new piece of software or whatever is superior, it might be superior, but it would probably sound different. It probably wouldn't be the Tyco, the signature Tyco sound, you know what I mean? Right. Like the imperfections that might come from whatever piece of software he's currently using, that's what makes the type of sound. Yeah, he had said in another interview that the effect that he applies on his baselines, it's the exact same effect he's used for years and he doesn't mess with it at all.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's why his music has sounded so consistent for years. So we should play the second clip because we do have a second clip from that song. And there's something really cool that happens in this clip. It's kind of a, it almost is like a tempo change, maybe a little bit. The drums, there's a few more layers that get added to the drum track that it's really cool. It's kind of a cascading type thing going on. So anyway, let's play that. This is another clip from ours, drag number two, on dive.

Yeah, so he just does a great job. with the drums, man. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, that whole clip, that's just ear candy, man. You know? Did you say it's irritating? No, no.

Ear candy. Ear candy, okay, yeah. It's definitely. It's just delightful. It's just great. It's great. And again, like you mentioned earlier, like, if we were to play a, if you were to take a Tyco 101, like this would be like lesson number one.

Yeah. Day one of the class. Day one, here's the Tycho sound. Yeah. Get familiar with it. Yeah. So anyway. So let's also mention now that for this album, this is the first time you started working with some outside musicians.

Yes. Specifically, a guitar player by the name of Zach Brown. Yeah. He started working with him during the recording process. And then after that, for that tour, for the tour for dive, he toured with Zach Brown, and then he brought in drummer Rory O'Connor

to play live drums for him for this tour. And I feel like there might be some conflicting facts, or maybe we just haven't read it correctly, but I'm not 100% sure if he actually sat down in the studio with Scott and Zach to make this album or not. But he toured with them for this album.

And since then, now they're basically a trio. It's a three-piece band. It's Scott Hansen, Zach Brown, and Rory O'Connor. That's essentially Tyco now. Yeah, so 2011 dive comes out.

2014, I believe they recorded as the trio. That was Awake, came out in 2014. And then he had a release in 2016 called Epoch. And I think they approached that album. That was the first album where it was less about the effects and more about the instrumentation. Even more so than awake.

Yeah. Because, yeah, because Scott mentions in a little interview segment during a K-E-X-P, which is, it's a public radio station up here in Seattle. It's an awesome public radio station, really good music. I think everybody knows about K-E-X-P, man. I knew about that before you moved up to Washington. Yeah, but there's a great Tyco performance that they did in 2014 on K-E-X-P, and they interviewed them in-between songs. and he said that for the album Awake, after touring with these guys and working with Zach,

they wanted to kind of capture the sound that they were made on the road. They wanted to capture that on record. So Awake was the first record that they did as a band. Yeah. And since then, yeah, since then he doesn't even really consider Tyco just him anymore. Yeah, I think it's a,

I think it's also like a process of like discovery for Scott because for a dive, that's the first time he started to incorporate a guitar, like an actual guitar in his music. So I think he's just, you know, it's kind of interesting. He's going from his laptop project to like trying to like tying in all these live instruments and putting it into like the Tyco sound.

You know what I mean? And it works so well, man. It works so well. Yeah. Like it really is an evolution of like of the Tycho sound. And but at the same time it all sounds so cohesive, you know. But yeah. Yeah.

So it's cool. So anyway, let's move on to the final pick. We're only going with two tracks today. But this song. It's called Adrift. It's track number eight. You may have recognized the song separate from Dive, if you're a Tyco fan. That is because it was released as a single.

It's interesting. So this is no filler. We try not to talk about singles, album singles. We try to talk about the more obscure tracks in between the singles. So this is kind of weird because it came out, it was released in 2008 as a single to the Pastas Prologue era of Tyco. And it was the A side to a single that had From Home on it as the B side. And From Home is track one of Pastest's Prolog, but a drift is not on Pastus Prologue. So usually with singles, you know, the B side is the track that that perhaps didn't show up on the record,

while the A side is either a single or some other track off the record. So it's kind of weird how that worked out. Yeah, it's weird that he didn't, that a drift didn't show up on Past's Prolog. So he must have written it after Passus Prolog came out. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that must have been it. Yeah, so this single must have come out after Pastas Prologue.

Right, but, but like, it's credited as a Pastas Prolog single on Wikipedia. Right, right, right. So, and I had asked you this earlier, because I was curious to know if he just completely re-recorded, like revisited a drift in 2011 when he made Dive and re-recorded it, you know, like with the help of Zach and maybe, Rory to kind of change it up a little bit. But from what you're telling me,

because you've actually listened to this 2008 single. Yeah. It's the same. It's the same, yeah. I remember hearing Adrift on the single way before Dive came out. Yeah. And then I was, you know, it was cool to see that he threw it on there. And yeah, it's the same song.

It's not, it wasn't me. And, you know, he mentions in an interview that he did with, This website called Ear Milk. There's actually quite a bit of info that we've kind of skipped over this time around Q. That's all right. But he's saying that on Ear Milk, they asked him, how long did this album take you to make? He says that the dive took six years to make. Basically, as he describes it, he was just kind of screwing around making dive at first since he had another job.

so he wasn't committed. He spent a year at the end really dedicated to putting it all together. He goes on to say that Adrift is the oldest track on the record as far as like when he wrote it, when he recorded it. And Eleggy is the last song that he wrote.

So anyway... Which is also the last song on the record. Yeah, the last song. So it's kind of interesting when you listen to Dive, you're listening to like six years of Tycho music on an album. And Adrift came out and he wrote and recorded Adrift

in the era of Passes Prolog as far as like this was still just a laptop project for him. I think it, I mean, I think the song fits so well with the rest of Dive. Yeah. Let's play it. So we got a couple clips. Yeah. Let's go ahead and play it.

so they can hear what the fuck we're talking about, dude. So let's play it, but I'm just going to preface it by saying that this is my all-time favorite Tycho track. And that's significant, dude. Yeah, it is. So let's just play it and then I'll gush over it. So I think this song showcases the way he approaches drum beats and the way he puts them together in his songs.

because I love how in that intro you hear this drumbeat and it sounds like it's being played in another room or like being played underwater or something you know it's it sounds far off and then when the song comes in in full force or whatever like a minute in or however long

there's a whole different drumbeat placed on top of that one and that one continues to play in the background and those two drum beats together make a whole other beat and it just works so well and I just love it. Yeah, it's great.

And that's interesting that you talked about how it sounds like it's in another room because like I don't know yeah, I think a lot of his his sound it sounds like it's filtered through something right? Right. And there's an interview or a lecture that he gave at the Academy of Art where he's got this Q&A session.

And somebody asked him like, hey, can you describe? Now, this is about, he's talking about his graphic design. Like this is, he's not talking about Tyco. Right. So this was a lecture. This was a graphic design lecture. Yeah, exactly. So somebody asked him about how he approaches his color.

And he talks about how. Whenever you're seeing, if you're seeing like red or something like that on one of his pieces, you're not seeing red as it were. You're seeing red coming through like a color burn on multiply mode in Photoshop. Yeah. And we'll post a picture of this on, and the show notes for this episode. but just take a look at his album art for the science of patterns. Yeah.

That's red, but it's not like, it's not red. There's something different about it. Well, he uses a ton of layers, adjustment layers and overlays and all that kind of stuff to get. But, but no, it's along the same van as like filtered. Like, everything is like, it looks like, not, I don't want to say weathered, but like. No, yeah, that, I like that. Gently, gently. worn,

maybe, gently used. Yeah. But you're describing, you're describing, you're describing the Tyco sound, man. Yeah,

that's, and this is, it goes back to what I'm saying, like, everything he does, he approaches it, like he's got a, he's got a,

like these, this look that he's, that this vibe that he's putting out. It's just, it's him as an artist. That's why you see it in his, in his graphic art and you hear it in his music. You know what I mean?

So anyway, yeah. That weathered, nostalgic vibe. Yes, exactly. So, anyway, so as I was saying earlier, this is one of my favorite Ticoat songs of all time. I think the drumbeat, I love that drum beat, dude. It's down tempo. And like, as you were saying, it's got that interesting, like, it's a layered drumbeat.

It's two different drum beats, basically. Yeah. it's a layer you would have to have two drummers to pull this off to pull this drumbeat off right yeah uh so clip number two and this is so this is your favorite tycho song yeah so number two takes those takes that drumbeat away yeah let me let me let me tee this up here go for it because this is not only is this my favorite tycho song but what you're you're going to hear in this next Tyco clip, this next clip from a drift is my favorite moment in any Tyco song. So like he said, the drums are taken away. Basically, this is the bridge.

And if you're a fan of down tempo or IDM, intelligent dance music, it's, you know, electronic music in It's all about layers, right? And to me, the difference between a good down-tempo song and just a generic one that I'm going to forget after I hear it is how does the artist, how do they layer and how do they add and take away and bring back those layers? You know what I mean? Yeah, because with electronic music's particularly down-tempo and IDM, like you said, said, it can become very formulaic to where you can almost predict what's going to happen.

Like they're going to build up the song, they're going to add these layers, and then they're going to pull away, they're going to take away the drumbeat. And if you listen to enough of it, you can know, you know when to expect it. Like, okay, they took it away. And I guarantee you they're going to bring it back. And it's probably going to be right here. there it is. Yep. The difference between that kind of generic formulaic

and a really exceptional down-tempo artist and track is how they do it, how they bring it back, you know, and how they build the anticipation to bring it back. So anyway, this song, I think he brings the drums back in a way that really pays off, in my opinion, because there's a bunch of layers that he's adding back on when the drums get introduced back. And it really kind of,

it's definitely the climax of the song for sure. But anyway, let's just play it because I'm not going to describe it as well as the actual song. But this is one of my favorite Tycho moments to date. So without further ado. Q, you can't see me from here but I got goosebumps, friend. No, I can see him, dude.

You can see him? Yeah, I can see him. That moment impacts me in the same way every time I hear it. When those drums come back, he's got sort of this swell of this other layer that he adds on, this synth pad thing that he's doing.

Yeah, and he adds that acoustic, that super simple. acoustic line. Yeah. When those drums pull out. Yeah, that's right. He adds, yeah, see, again, you know, it's all about what are you taking away

and what are you putting on as far as layers are concerned. And then when you bring back the layer that you took away, how are you bringing it back? And are you doing anything different when you bring it back? And like, this song is a great example of like how impactful it can be. when it's done right. So that's it.

I mean, I think those are two really good examples of kind of, because ours is a little bit more upbeat. That's your favorite. I don't, yeah. I was using upbeat to describe an Allison Chain song last week. So whatever. You know what I'm saying?

No, yeah, absolutely. Ours is. Yeah. Yeah. It's more playful. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. More playful.

All right, there we go. Adrift is more of a... It's more subdued. Yeah. There you go. Brother. There we go. I'm using new words to describe things here.

Playful and subdued. So... Yeah, but you know what? You do not listen to this episode and then just not ever listen to Tycho again. you really have to listen to his albums in their entirety to really get a feel for what Scott Hansen can do. QR listeners are free to do whatever the hell they want, my friend. No, do as I say.

But I agree. You should have, at the very least, listen to Passus Prolog and dive. I think those are, Passes Prolog is a really exceptional debut album. I was just listening to it the other day. It is, it's different than Dive. I think Dive, you know, it's when he started to take it more seriously. Past his prologue, there's moments of the album that sound kind of,

you can tell this is a guy who's experimenting with this kind of stuff for the first time. And it is, it's his, that's the, it's the laptop project day, of Tyco. Yeah, and if you... There's some great stuff on there. If you're a gear nerd, according to that interview that I read from Sound Toys, you'll pick up on just how shittily recorded it was, too, apparently.

I wouldn't know... Well, that's funny because I sure as hell can't tell. Yeah. You know, I probably have a repressing. I think I have a repressing of it, so it's probably like remaster. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but anyways, yeah, exactly.

So it's a... past this prologue is Scott Hanson fucking around on his laptop when he was bed with it. Yeah, in a really in a really impressive way. You know, I mean,

I wish I could fuck him on my laptop like that. But, um... It really is a great album all the way through. I love... There's so many songs on there that, that I really adore. Yeah, and the song that, that was paired up with a drift

as the, um, the single from home is actually a, a really good, It's paired up really well with the drift. That's probably why he released them together. They're really, they sound really cohesive together. Those two tracks are really, really good.

I think my favorite song from Pastus Prolog is a circular reeducation. Does that have sort of the vocal sample? Yes. Yes. Is that the, let me just play it on my earbirds. It's track seven. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good.

that sample almost sounds to me like that Tosca song what's that Tosca song on on on just save that for when we do a Tosca episode man yeah well yeah we're going to do Suzuki at some point

which is a Tosca's a really exceptional down tempo band Tosca's our introduction to town tempo man and we absolutely and we discover down tempo together And we'll get into that on that episode. Yeah, that'll be good because that was a,

that was an interesting moment in your life for sure. Absolutely. Those were good times. Yeah, dude, that'll be a good. You saved my life, man. That's a good, hang. Okay. Oh, yeah, you know what?

It's a little anticlimatic, but that's all right. I'll take credit for that. I'll take credit for that. Yeah, so that'll be a great episode, man. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, so that's it for this. week. That is our take on Tyco's

2011 album, Dive. Yes. Go ahead and listen to it because we barely scratched the surface. We only played you two songs there. I mean, so you heard a snippet of the title track, Dive. That was the song that the intro song that played us in. But yeah, you really got to hear it

to get the full experience. and you shouldn't stop there. You should go back and listen to some of his earlier work and then listen to some of his new stuff. And you can really see how much he has grown as a musician, but how impressive it is that he has really, like, like he figured out what the Tyco sound was back in 2008 or earlier and has just slowly just perfected it ever since then.

I mean, how many, many bands can say that. You know what I mean? Well, let's go ahead and just preview what we're doing next, because this is a band that I feel like kind of lost their way, probably because of record label influence and all that jazz. So next week, we're going to do an episode on Kings of Leon's debut album, Youth and Young manhood, which came out in the early 2000s.

I cannot wait. 2003. So we were, dude. And we, yeah, we're sophomores in high school. Yeah, I can't believe that, man. Because this was not a band, this was not a band that we stumbled upon later. Like, we were there at the origin. Yeah.

So yeah, we'll get into all that. Yeah, I'm really excited about that one. Yeah. I feel like at this point, everyone knows who. Kings of Leon is. If you don't know who they are, you've heard one of their mega singles because there was it's almost a guarantee that you've heard a Kings of Leon song by now. Almost guaranteed.

There was a time like 2010, 2008 where they had a couple of tracks that were blasted on the radio. They were everywhere. Every, every hit radio station was playing one of their singles. And for good reason, man. Those songs are, they're great songs. They know how to write catchy songs, man. That's what makes them great.

But we fell in love with the different Kings of Leon. Yeah, that's all we're going to say. Say no more, brother. Exactly. Okay. Say no more. And I think we've already got an idea of what our bonus episode is going to be for Tyco. I won't say which song, but we're going to kind of dive into one of his remixes that he did.

Maybe we'll pick another song to do with that. But yeah, that should be good. But yeah, our, yeah, Quentin is talking about our, our midweek, little mini short episodes that we release that we're calling, we're going to start to call them side tracks. Basically, we just dive into one track, any track, as long as we can somehow tie it to the band or the album or the decade or the genre that we covered on the previous episode. So just a little something to get you through that that midweek hump when you're like just itching for another no filler podcast. That's right. All right. So yeah.

That's a wrap, Prince. So at the end of every episode, we close out with a song from an artist that was an inspiration to the band that we're talking about. It doesn't have to be the entire band. it could just be one of the members who mentioned them as an influence or or what have you. So for Tyco he mentioned in an interview

he was asked he was asked what is your most favorite remix that you've made for somebody else and this was in the interview that Ear Milk did and he said that he when he remixed Little Man for Little Dragon He said that they're one of his favorite bands, and he went on to say when asked, is there an artist in any media that you would like to work with?

He mentions Yukimina Jano, which is the lead singer of Little Dragon. He says he loves her voice. He's worked with her a couple times, so he wants to work with her again. Either way, it's obvious that he loves these guys. They probably influenced him in somewhere or another. So we're going to play a track off of their Here's when you're going to cut this up to make it seem Like I know what I'm talking about

It had to be at least 2009 when this album came out And let me tell you why I know this dude And this is trippy as fuck You know how Facebook gives you Here's what happened however many years ago today Here's a memory that you should share Yeah Today

November 21st, eight years ago, I posted a Facebook status that said, Machine Dreams. That's all that said. Wait a minute. Because I like to be obscure and shit back then. So,

November 21st, 2009, my status for that day on Facebook was the name of Little Dragons album Machine Dreams. And when did that come out, Travis? Yeah, 2009, dude, that's, okay, that's crazy. You're telling me right now, dude, that eight years ago, to the day, you posted on your wall about machine dreams? That is correct. What in the world?

November 21st, 2009 at 1116 a.m. Holy shit. My Facebook status said machine dreams. Oh, my, there is a gut. What, dude? No, that's crazy because here we are, dude. Eight years later. I know.

We're about to play a clip for Machine Dreams. Came out in 2009. It was their second full, full-length album by a band called Little Dragon. Scott Hanson loves him. He wants to work with them again. Yeah, I might be going to church on Sunday. Yeah. That's a quinky dink, you know what I mean, if I've ever heard of one.

I do know what you mean. So I would go out and buy a fucking lottery ticket if I were you, dude. Do they do that up in Washington? They do. And guess what? You guys are probably going to hear my fucking cat hitch meowing at the door saying, where's my food? And I'm going to say, brother, I already fed you earlier today.

All right. That's fine, dude, because we heard my cat in the last episode. So they're just making their weekly appearance. Well, he's not getting food. That's all I'm saying. You know what? You got to lay down the law sometimes. So the song that we decided to play to play our outro,

It's a song called Feather Off of Little Dragon's 2009 release Machine Dreams That's my favorite song on the album Yeah, it's a cool track man It's cool I love the drumbeat I love the vibes

It's super mellow and Yeah, it's cool It's cool All right, so that's that'll do it Um Look, look in your podcast feeds Midweek We should have a

A sidetrack episode dropping for you. And that's it. Stay tuned. Next week we'll do Kings of Convenience. Oh, shit. Kings of Leon's. I was sorry, dude.

I knew that was going to happen at least once. Yeah. Yeah, we'll have to make sure we don't say that over and over again. Yeah, yeah. But next way, we're going to cover Kings of Leon's debut album, Youth and Young Manhood. That's going to be a doozy. I can't wait for that.

I can't wait. Yeah. All right. here we go. We're going to play you out with Feather by Little Dragon. My name is Travis. And I'm Quentin. See you next time.