Tycho is back with his new album Simulcast, a companion album to GRAMMY-nominated album Weather which was released last July. With Simulcast, Tycho reimagined Weather, which featured lyrics and vocals by Saint Sinner, as an instrumental album. Diving deeper into the creative process, Tycho’s Scott Hanson states: “A simulcast is the transmission of a program across different mediums and in different languages. With these two albums I wanted to present the same ideas in two languages, one more literal and the other more open to interpretation. Simulcast expands on the concepts laid out in Weather, but shifts into the abstract with instrumental soundscapes in place of lyrics, opening up a visual space and translating the message into a new language.”
To really appreciate the full body of the work, listen to the albums back to back and check out the track-by-track comparison Scott put together for each of the corresponding songs on the record. Stream/Download the new album Simulcast below and get ready for Tycho to kickstart the next leg of their US tou starting in May! Get your tickets below!
Simulcast
Tycho's Scott Hansen discusses the five vocal songs that became instrumentals on Simulcast below:
Alright – For How Long
With For How Long I felt there was something beautiful about its simplicity so I wanted to keep it simple and to the point. But this was also one of the first songs I wrote for Weather so I had been working on different versions for a while, trying out different ideas. With Alright I wanted to find a way to integrate those ideas into the instrumental version.
Outer Sunset - Skate
Skate was meant to be a very stripped down, delicate arrangement. But I always felt the main chord progression had an interesting rhythm to it that would pair nicely with a kind of dirty, distorted drum break. Once I had that in there I set about rewriting the lead guitar parts to give some more movement to the song.
PCH - Pink & Blue
These two songs are very similar, I simply replaced the vocals with a new synth lead and removed the ending. It was interesting to me how much those minor changes effected the overall vibe of the song.
Cypress – Japan
Japan always had this warm, almost psychedelic energy to it and I wanted to expand on that with the instrumental. So I wrote a middle section that went into some more abstract spaces but kept the bulk of the original intact as bookends. Kind of ended up feeling like a dream sequence to me.
Stress – No Stress
No Stress was the one song on Weather I wrote specifically for vocals so it was a bit more difficult to adapt to an instrumental. I knew there was something compelling about the energy in the tempo and rhythm but I knew just removing the vocals would leave things feeling a little sparse. I decided to revisit some themes from Epoch and create a really dynamic juxtaposition with the guitars and drums.
Weather
“Weather” (Official Music Video)
Simulcast Merch
