Japan / Australia ’19 Posters
Been a while! Back on the road and did some posters for the Fuji Rock and Sydney Opera House Tycho shows. US tour starts Sep. 5 in LA, more info at https://tychomusic.com/home/#tour
Deep in production on a new album but took a break to do this little one-off track for the Ninjawerks compilation. Hope you enjoy :)
I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA tomorrow (Monday, October 3rd) at noon PST at r/electronicmusic. Stop by if you want to ask any questions
The Epoch is a hinge. We tend to follow a linear trajectory until a point at which we realize that through free will the path can be bent and redirected.
I’ve been very busy for the past year or so working on a new album so it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Now that the new Tycho album — Epoch — is out I wanted to write a little about the meaning and origin of the artwork. I worked as a graphic designer for 14 years until I decided to pursue music full time so the visual element of Tycho has always been at the core of the project for me. I think the imagery tells a story that the music can’t fully articulate, and vice versa.
· The Trilogy Begins
The cover for Dive was a foray into maximalism combining photography and design. I wanted to evoke the sense of being on an unavoidable path, one from which deviation was impossible. I wanted the viewer to be pulled into the image and be drawn toward the sun. I think this design speaks to the music in that it felt like the beginning of a journey and the multi-layered composition echoed the sonic aesthetic of the music. I spent quite a bit of the next couple years refining this style and creating various collage type images.
· Enter Minimalism and The Trapezoid
· The Awake Era
Both the circle and the trapezoid symbols featured heavily in the videos and visuals for Tycho during the Awake tours (2014-2015)
During the Awake album cycle I continued down this path and lots of imagery followed for show posters and releases.
· The Darkness
The overall direction for Awake was very light and halfway through the cycle I started shifting things into a darker space for contrast and to foreshadow the next album.
· The Epoch
Awake had been out for over two years and it was time to start thinking about the next release. Up until this point, when doing minimal compositions I had been using textures and distressing to give some depth to the images and break up solid fields of color. For the next phase I wanted to further simplify and remove any extraneous elements. I wanted to cut to the core of the message and try to distill things into a language of basic symbols.
Musically, this album was about circling back while maintaining forward motion; revisiting and refining the concepts of earlier albums with a view to the future. My primary goal was to incorporate the color scheme of the very first Tycho release: The Science of Patterns EP (2002). I also wanted to revisit the simplicity of that artwork as Epoch was all about focus and efficiency, chiseling away anything which was not absolutely necessary.
The following are selected iterations of the Epoch cover design which led to the final version.
I felt that the power of this image would be in its simplicity and also in its portability. It could adapt to many form factors with ease and felt more like a modular system than a singular image. At this point you have to take into account that the vast majority of people will experience album artwork at a tiny square on a smartphone. At this scale a lot of nuance and detail will be lost. This is not to say that I intended to oversimplify purely for this reason, but it is a consideration.
· Release
Epoch was released 30 days after completion as a surprise, as such there wasn’t enough time to have vinyl and CDs produced; only digital versions were available on release day. As a stopgap until the vinyl arrived, we decided to offer a custom slipmat with pre-order purchase at retail outlets. More about the release strategy in The New York Times piece With Vinyl, the Musician Tycho Establishes a Physical Presence
For the Awake release I cut up a print of the cover art into squares and released it as nine panels as a way to count down to the release. For Epoch I wanted to create several alternate versions of the cover art to use for build up. This release was not announced ahead of time so it was fun to slowly release elements of the design without people fully understanding what was coming. Here are a few examples of the alternate versions.
All in all this was an enjoyable and fulfilling process for me as a designer. I’m looking forward to the next couple years, creating future permutations and working with this design/color system. The first example of this is below, the poster for the show at The Fonda in LA.
Thanks for reading, if you have any questions leave a comment and I’ll do my best to reply.
Have some Tycho DJ sets coming up here in San Francisco and a short US tour. Hope to see you out!
Tycho DJ Tour 2016
FEB 10 – CLUB VINYL – DENVER, CO
FEB 11 – BANG BANG – SAN DIEGO, CA
FEB 12 – GEM & JAM FESTIVAL – TUCSON, AZ
FEB 13 – EXCHANGE LA – LOS ANGELES, CA
FEB 16 – BARDOT – MIAMI, FL
FEB 17 – FLASH – WASHINGTON, DC
FEB 18 – INPUT AT OUTPUT – BROOKLYN, NY
FEB 19 – THE MID – CHICAGO, IL
FEB 20 – POPULUX – DETROIT, MI
MAR 04 – 1015 FOLSOM – SAN FRANCISCO, CA
MAR 05 – 1015 FOLSOM – SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Elsewhere – Tycho sunrise dj set from the Dusty Rhino at Burning Man on Thursday, September 3rd, 2015.
Don’t really know how to express my gratitude for the experience with everyone out there this year, it was so perfectly beautiful. Thanks to everyone who made it possible. See you next time!
Special Thanks to: David and The Space Between camp, Dane and the Dusty Rhino crew, Christopher Willits, Kirk & Karey, Nitemoves (Rory O’Connor), Heathered Pearls (Jakub Alexander), Rob Garza, Kiyoka, Katie, Seth, Tobias, and the whole Disco Space Shuttle crew.
RIP Mike Reigle and Jon Horvath
Track Listing:
Brothomstates – Mdrmx
Photek – T’Raenon
Casino Versus Japan – It’s Very Sunny
Dominik Eulberg – Datenübertragungsküsschen ( Sistema Remix)
Dauwd – Kolido
Cubenx – First Wave Front
Jon Hopkins – Open Eye Signal
Daniel Bortz – Tomorrow We Start a New Life Again
Few Nolder – Clouds (Boso Reversion)
Daniel Avery – Knowing We’ll Be Here
Daniel Bortz – Monkey Biznizz
Downtown Party Network – What You Need
John Tejada – Orbiter (Simian Mobile Disco Mix Version 2)
Dauwd – And
Jamie XX – Gosh
Aphex Twin – Avril 14th
Boards of Canada – ROYGBIV
<<<< SUNRISE >>>>
Bibio – Lover’s Carvings (Bruno Be & Eddie M Remix)
Roosevelt – Sea (Dub)
Downtown Party Network – No Drama Afterhours
Telephones – Blaff
Tame Impala – The Moment
Tycho – Awalk
We have a very limited quantity of special-edition covers available featuring ISO50 on the limited edition (100 copies) cover. Check them out here. We could only get our hands on 40 of the 100 printed with this limited cover.
We’re doing a 50% off sale on everything in the shop in for the one-year anniversary release of Awake.
Sale runs until Thursday morning at 8AM PST. Get on it now, prices haven’t been this good since…ever. A great time to fill in your Tycho collection or get those t-shirts/prints/studio editions you’ve been drooling over.