You can do a lot in a half decade. Raise a child to school age. Learn a Berlitz’s worth of foreign languages. Graduate college at a state school. Or wage roughly half of a billion dollar foreign war of little domestic or strategic importance. Tycho opted for more pastoral and pacifistic means, recording Dive, the follow-up to 2006’s Past is Prologue.
Slated for a November release on the ever-consistent Ghostly, Scott Hansen’s first single is “Hours,” and you don’t need an etymologist to decipher the intent. This is a descent into memory, without the slurred trappings of nostalgia. There are no sepia tones or frail murmurs, just gentle movements and the gnawing patience forced on you by adulthood.
“Hours” unfolds with synthesizers that press on the past like Proust, climbing with inexorable persistence. The careful measuring of sifting sand, with the precision of his astrologically inclined namesake. It’s not far from the fever dreams of chillwave, but with the melancholic regret of someone who understands the power of erosion. Hourglass pop to be played at odd hours. Or tonight at the Echoplex with Shigeto. Good times had by alts.
Download:
MP3: Tycho-“Hours”
