Tycho

About two minutes into Scott Hansen's fifth album as Tycho, you realize there’s something very different compared to previous full-lengths: “When setting out to record Weather I wanted to finally fulfill what had been a vision of mine since the beginning: to incorporate the most organic instrument of all, the human voice. While developing the initial concepts, I met Hannah Cottrell, aka Saint Sinner, and the vocal component of the album immediately came into focus.” Cottrell’s voice lends a certain... domiciliary quality that Hansen’s music has never seen before, but the two complement each other handsomely. Suddenly, the sweeping, otherworldly soundscapes that have made his work so transportive are swept away in favor of something much more tactile and human (that’s a good thing). Listen back to Tycho’s earliest records (which I literally could not differentiate from Boards Of Canada, and still can’t!) and it doesn’t sound like the work of the same man at all. This growth is reflected in the album art, jettisoning the sepia-tone colorblock orbs that defined the trilogy of Dive, Awake and Epoch, opting instead for a candid photograph (Hansen is also a photographer) that further reinforces the record’s feminine and intimate undertones.