Above is some (poorly shot on a phone, sorry) test footage from the new visuals set for the Tycho live show (next one is this Thursday, 4/7 in SF). The song is from the forthcoming album. It’s not all completely tightened up yet but you get the idea. I recently stripped down the entire live set — audio and video — and started from scratch. With the new album pretty much wrapped up I decided to rework the visuals to go with all the new material and to have everything work better with the new live band. What you’re seeing is VDMX effecting / compositing video in real-time on a Macbook Pro. Everything is being triggered / synced by another machine via MIDI over IP running Reaper which is handling all the audio duties.
I’ve been using VDMX for years now but just recently switched to Reaper as my DAW for recording and decided to use it for the live shows as well (Was never happy with Ableton. It’s a great app but it just didn’t fit my specific needs / workflow). It’s been a very freeing experience to say the least. Being able to use the same software in the studio and on stage has helped immeasurably and opened up some possibilities that didn’t exist before. Here’s hoping it all works as smoothly on Thursday (the first Tycho show to feature the new album and visuals) as it has been during rehearsals.
I also wanted to take this time to give a bit of a progress report on the new Tycho album. It feels like forever since I started, but everything has finally come together. Things took a lot of twists and turns; a lot has changed and some songs have been shelved while new ones have taken their place. But I think the album is now — finally — what I envisioned it to be when I started this process some two years ago. All that is left to do now is tie up some loose ends and complete the mixing / mastering phase and things should be ready to go. With label schedules and all that I’d imagine a release date sometime after this summer.
Thanks to everyone for your patience and support over this past couple years. You have afforded me the ability to focus on my work in a way I was never able to before, and for that I am extremely grateful.
This is the work of Thomas Doyle. Truly unique and unusual in the most wonderful way! I recognized the style from a NYT Magazine cover a few years back that I always kept around just because I loved the image. Definitely a little weird, but definitely a lot awesome.
On a side note, I love cityscapes or scenes contained in glass — I think a sentiment carried over from my days spent playing SimCity 2000 where the glass-enclosed Archipelago was the ultimate goal. Despite the obvious spatial downsides of being confined to a limited space, I’ve always wanted to reside in such a dwelling.
I love to sit back and let melodic psychedelic rock play for hours if its good, Lie In Light by Cloudland Canyon is a pretty consistent record that I rely on for those occasions plus it changes up and has just enough diversity, I posted a few tracks from it to make that point.
Com Truise turned me onto 18 Carat Affair’s soundcloud. Most soft rock recorded on tape and slowed down gets my attention especially if it has gentle keys over it.
A new Lone record is coming out, I heard a few tracks on his last.fm page, sounds very promising, anyone ever see him live?
This modern “weekend house” — designed by MVMArchitekt — sits in the Eifel countryside in Germany. All of those shingles (siding and roof) are apparently aluminum, I’d imagine this place will be a round a while.
The winners in the Tycho poster + ticket giveaway (for Tycho live in SF 4/7) are in. I decided to add another winner and give everyone posters so there were a total of five posters and six tickets up for grabs. So without further adieu, the winners are:
Colin Johnston – Poster + 2 Tickets Curtis Joseph – Poster + 2 Tickets Zac Witte – Poster + 2 Tickets Christian Lawrence – Poster Cristina Dennison – Poster
Congrats to the winners, you should be receiving an email with details soon. Please get in touch (talk [at] iso50 [dot] com) if you don’t hear anything within the next few hours. Thanks to everyone for entering, hope to see you Thursday night here in San Francisco.
I post tons of mixes on ISO50 but I have to hand it to XLR8R for finding this decades best mix yet. Hands down, this kind of track selection from the god of techno Ricardo Villalobos. Really listen to the brilliance, i’m on my 7th listen thru, looking for a tracklist now, enjoy.
