There’s a perennial joke on the Boards Of Canada Facebook groups about Tycho, one which varies on a theme somewhere between accusations of plagiarism and merely paying close attention.
It starts usually with someone posting a link to Tycho’s 2014 album Awake before adding a comment like, ‘I wonder if Tycho have ever listened to any BoC?’, following that up with the insertion of a knowing, wink emoji. Even in the highly closed off world of IDM obsessives, it’s still the wellest of well-worn tropes.
If Scott Hansen was feeling mischievous he could respond by pointing out that Awake has amassed more streams than all of the Sandison brothers’ work combined, despite the massive gulf in relative critical perceptions between the two. But Weather is not the latest installment in some sort of imaginary beef, just a fresh chapter in a career which began as a sideline from his graphic design work and has led to over 20 elapsed years, international DJ sets, world tours and a Grammy nomination.
This success has been founded on making music which is profoundly escapist, an amalgam of 8-bit simplicity, disarming electronica and beatific phrasing; via 2006’s Past Is Prologue, Hansen was one of the founding fathers of the chillwave movement, even if this was much more by accident than design.
Weather proves that he’s determined though to take the project into new territories, firstly by the addition of Hannah Cottrell (AKA Saint Sinner): ‘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’ – and by making the structural changes which that change implies. He’s also perceptive enough to ignore the sin of over-elaboration, the eight tracks here barely making it to the half hour mark in total.
Does the addition of words refocus everything? To an extent. On Japan Cottrell takes centre stage, the glassy, horizon chasing syllables all written by her as well as performed after originally receiving nothing more than a title to work with. The effect is a little less pronounced on Pink And Blue – a gathering of memories from the singer’s pansexual affair with both a man and woman – but its warm synth pop overtones are lightweight and breathless, as if the duo have been doing this mainstream friendly thing for years.
By the time they reach Skate this new give and take has taken full form however, love and desire new shades amongst innocent loops and a hushed, intimate delivery that begins to shift this sound from the realm of imagination and half-suggestion to something more tangible and realised.
As if to emphasise the state of transition, on Into The Woods and the title-track the fantasy arpeggios and melodic overload are indisputably of the Tycho fingerprint, a touchdown back into the familiarly alternate reality of the future past.
On Weather Scott Hansen has made his home in both places – and any resemblance to anywhere else is purely coincidental.
