We got Scott on the line to talk about the new album, his artwork, and how both halves paint a picture of who he is at the core. We’re also giving away one of his amazing t-shirts to one lucky ChinaShopper. All you have to do is Like us on Facebook and post your best sunset or sunrise camera phone photo to our Wall, or follow us on Twitter and TwitPic your shot. Just use the hashtag #tychosun so we know to look for you. We’ll be taking submissions until midnight PST on Monday, October 31.

Your show at the Echoplex was incredible. Last time I saw you play in L.A. was at the Ghostly International 10-Year party, and it was just you by yourself plus visuals.

Scott Hansen: Yeah, I built that band over the last year.

What was the reason behind that?

Scott Hansen: I never wanted the project to be identified with a single person or anything too specific. That was kinda the only way I knew how to do it—the laptop thing—but I never really enjoyed it that much. I just felt like it was something I had to do. I guess it took meeting the right people who I felt comfortable with. I started writing (the new record) with the bassist and the guitarist, and through that process just started realizing, “We really need to turn this into a show.” I knew that was something I wanted to do to take it to the next level. I just didn’t know what it entailed. Meeting those guys cemented the whole thing.

Was the majority of the record written collaboratively like that?

Scott Hansen: We never all sat together. There are a couple of songs where we really worked through it, but I’d say maybe 5% was done that way. I would finish songs—or at least get them to where I was pretty happy with them—and then we’d set up a time for Zac (Brown, bassist/guitarist) to come over. I’d be like, “I feel like I hear a guitar here.” I played a lot of the guitars on the album, but he’s a really skilled guitarist. I just use it as a writing tool. For “A Walk,” the first bass line that drops in after about 45 seconds, that was Matt (McCord), the drummer. By the end of it, everyone had a hand in something in there.

Does that account for the more uptempo sound?

Scott Hansen: Yeah. I think there was a certain insularly quality to my earlier work. I see a lot of the album with an energetic backbeat, but parts of it are deeply emotional to me, so I see it more as a juxtaposition. Then you take a song like “Dive” and yeah, that’s a summery, upbeat type of thing.

Full of that hopeful emotion. Like, “I’m really happy, but let me think about exactly why.”

Scott Hansen: I think you just described me. Yeah, there’s this big sense of hope, but at the end of the day, whatever you’re looking for, you don’t quite have it in your hands. I guess that’s what the music’s about. I know there’s this other thing behind the curtain. I can’t see it, but I hope it’s something good. Music, to me, isn’t really about expressing happiness. It’s about expressing a longing or a hopefulness. I mean, it’s not just sad sack music. (Laughs) I know it has an uplifting edge to it.

That’s why I love Robert Smith and Lyle Lovett. Songwriters who can do happy and sad equally well, which allows them to put a unique spin on their music.

Scott Hansen: I definitely think that music and art—at least in my experience—are fueled by some sort of longing or something missing. When I get really low…that’s actually why I didn’t talk to you the other day. I broke up with my girlfriend of four years so I’m working through that. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced and I can’t do a God damn thing right now. Maybe I’m afraid of what will come out or something. I approach things when I’m feeling melancholy, but apparently I’ve never felt this before.

Whenever you’re effected emotionally, there’s a fine line between being able to create something and being just paralyzed by your mind. It’s weird.

Scott Hansen: Yup. It’s also a really intense time for shit I have to get done, so I’m trying to find my way out of that.

What’s your connection to water, the ocean and the coast? I mean, you’re not landlocked in San Francisco, but there feels like a much deeper connection there.

Scott Hansen: I’m from just outside Sacramento and it’s a really bucolic, rolling hills place with a lot of lakes and an amazing river that I spent my youth swimming in. There’s just something about the water. It’s the most literal and physical embodiment of that “other world” thing I was talking about earlier. When I stick my head underwater I feel like I’m visiting this other place for this brief moment. You can’t stay there forever, but that’s that metaphor for me.

I can’t recall an artist whose music and visual works are more in line with one another. A lot of artists can and have done both, but what I hear from Tycho is so in sync with your artwork as ISO50. Why is that synchronicity so important to you?

Scott Hansen: I think they fill in the blanks left by the other. I feel there are a lot of things I can’t express through design that I can definitely express through music and vice verse, but at the same time I think music is much more deep and complex than anything I could create in the 2D world. I think they tell the whole story when you put them together. What I really want to be doing is motion, and I feel like that’ll be when I ultimately express this thing I’ve been working towards my whole career.

Tycho – “Hours” by ChinaShopMag

Who influenced you from a design standpoint?

Scott Hansen: You know, I’ve never studied music or design in any formal way so I’m kinda ignorant to a lot of it. I didn’t even know who Brian Eno was until someone mentioned Music For Airports to me. Same goes for design. In design, it was more of a visual backdrop; things that I vaguely remember that shaped my early understanding of how things were supposed to look and feel. That visual language of the late ’70s and early ’80s through the prism of my parent’s taste. Their old records and eight-tracks, I used to dig through them, listen to them and just stare at the artwork. I guess that all really informed my style.

Do you start all your artwork in the computer or do you put pencil to paper most of the time?

Scott Hansen: I can think of maybe five times where I’ve started with a pure concept in my head and executed it in the real world, then brought it into the computer. But by and large it will be a photograph or something I saw and then I’ll start playing around with elements in Photoshop and then slowly add elements. Lately it’s become more of a photo collage type thing. I’ve really enjoyed working with multiple images and making them all feel like one. On the album cover (for Dive), there are like 20 or 30 different photos in there. But start to finish, we’re talking 98% in the box. The only time I really come out of the computer is if I need edges, lines or shapes that need to feel a little more organic. I’ll drip some ink on paper or draw lines with pencil and then blow them up so you get that imperfect edge, but that’s usually embellishment or finishing techniques.

Wait, 30 photos for the cover?

Scott Hansen: Yeah, man. That thing is like 800 layers. It’s insane how huge that image got. I only had a couple of weeks to do it, so I was throwing everything I had at it and it just kinda blew up out of control.

So for art, your approach is to pile on elements and then slowly strip away. Is that the same for music?

Scott Hansen: It’s opposite. Design is to throw everything at the canvas and peel away, but with music it’s starting with very raw and clean minimal ideas and then building and building. Not just layering for the sake of layering, but filling in the gaps.

Let’s go back to your first album, Past Is Prologue. Personal curiosity here, but I’ve always wondered where the vocal samples on “Dictaphone’s Lament” and “PBS” come from.

Scott Hansen: That’s my mom talking to me. She was a typist so she always had a Dictaphone around and she’d record me as a kid. Every year she’d record me once to be like, “This is what you sounded like when you were 7 or 8.” That whole album is like a eulogy for my youth and where I came from. That’s what “The Disconnect” is about; realizing that I had to leave my home, but wanting to give this monument to this time in my life.

Words by Rich Thomas (@TheLandfill). Photos by Dustin Downing (@MeTakeAPhoto).

Contest Rules:

Rule #1:
This competition is open to residents of the United States, ages 21 and older.
Rule #2:
You must provide a valid mailing address and phone number to receive the item.
Rule #3:
Although you can post as many photos as you like, number of photos posted will not necessarily effect your chances of winning.
Rule #4:
Your submissions must be posted by midnight PST on Monday, October 31st.
Rule #5:
You agree to all the following legal terms and conditions:

Acknowledgement: Selection of participants in the Tycho T-Shirt Contest (the “Contest”) shall be in the sole discretion of ChinaShop. (“ChinaShop,” “We,” “Us” or “Our(s)”). ChinaShop reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel the Contest and/or disqualify any participants at any time. All federal, state, and local laws and regulations apply. By participating in the Contest selection process (the “Selection Process”), you hereby agree to abide by any and all Contest rules and irrevocably grant permission to ChinaShop and its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, promotional partners and agents, and each of their directors, officers, employees and assigns (all of the foregoing, the “ChinaShop Parties”), to use and authorize the use by third parties of your name. You represent that you are twenty one (21) years of age or older.

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Dustin Downing, Additional photos by Joe Gall

For the past ten years, Detroit’s Movement festival has been notoriously fond of after parties. Whether they be of the renegade rave, abandoned factory sort or the most official, posh push-pop you can come by, the entire city becomes blanketed in non-stop nightlife until the sun comes up and the festival grounds once again reopen. Saturday was no exception as the Magic Stick (regularly voted in the top ten best venues in the country by Rolling Stone and Paste, home to the oldest bowling alley in the country) in Midtown Detroit welcomed nationally renowned electronic label Ghostly International’s 10-Year Anniversary to a packed house after tearing apart the Red Bull Music Academy stage earlier that day with the likes of The Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko and Ryan Elliott.

“It has been ten years of the festival, and it’s our ten-year anniversary,” points Sam Valenti, owner and founder of Ghostly International, hours before the showcase at the Stick backstage in the green room.  “It’s fun to run into friends that Ghostly has had for six, seven years all day at Movement.” And with Ghostly International Tycho by his side, it’s easy to see just what Valenti is getting at. “It’s exciting to be back where it all started over ten years ago,” adds Tycho. “To be right in the middle of it all…”

After an exhausting (read: really amazing) day hovering around the festival, the traveling carnival rolled north to the Magic Stick to catch magnetic sets by up-and-coming Detroit wonder whiz Deastro, New York’s Michna, Tycho and Chicago’s own Telefon Tel Aviv (myspace.com/telefontelaviv). The party elements of the show were healthy and intact — Deastro crawling across one of the pool tables like some sort of “sexy feline,” a wild-eyed blonde boy stealing beers from behind the bar — but the vibe became focused and colorfully intense when Telefon Tel Aviv began performing. If you’ve never heard the sound of a thousand clouds singing in ultimate sonic synth synchronicity, then you’ve never heard (or witnessed) Telefon Tel Aviv. With Tycho (whose set was equally heart stopping) taking care of the band’s live visuals, Telefon Tel Aviv was free to wander through the ear drums of over 300 people and distort everything they’ve ever thought “awesome” really means.

If you’ve never heard the sound of a thousand clouds singing in ultimate sonic synchronicity, then you’ve never heard (or witnessed) Telefon Tel Aviv. With Tycho (whose set was equally heart stopping) taking care of the band’s live visuals, Telefon Tel Aviv was free to wander through the ear drums of over 300 people and distort everything they’ve ever thought “awesome” really means. We caught up with Telefon’s Josh Eustis after the band’s set in the bowling alley — lights dimmed, lanes empty, crowd dissipating — and were quick to pat him on the back for such an amazing show, but also inquire about the difficulties of performing his first show since Telefon’s Charlie Cooper passed away in January — Eustis’ musical partner-in-crime for the past decade.

What were your thoughts on not only being part of the line-up tonight, but being part of Ghostly’s 10-Year Anniversary?
Josh Eustis: Really cool … especially considering we are not Ghostly artists. We are only surrogate Ghostly artists. We’ve done some remixes, and I’ve done a ton of production for Ghostly … but I haven’t actually put a record out on Ghostly, and that’s cool. That’s just a testament to the friendship [Valenti] and I have. It is a very cool thing to do, and a perfect way for me to start playing shows again.

And that is one of the things people are certainly intrigued by — your quickness to return to the road.
Josh Eustis: I mean, we were going to do this tour in February and that got all fucked up. I didn’t think I was going to play any more shows, and then people started asking the booking agents, “What are the chances? What are the chances?” We have five booking agents, and they were all told to give the same answer, “I don’t know. Ask me later. We’ll get in touch with you.” I thought about it for about six weeks, and I sat in New Orleans and did literally nothing for the month of February. I hung out with my mom, my mom, my brother, [and] my niece. And I thought, “Why not go play shows?” I just made this record. Am I going to pretend I didn’t make it? [Cooper] put a lot of work into that record, you know, and I don’t want his work to go unnoticed or go to waste. I want people to hear what he did in life and that means, for now, keeping the band going.

It seemed like everyone in attendance tonight picked up on the idea of this being much more than a show, a much more monumental thing…
Josh Eustis: This was the first show I’ve been nervous for in nine years … and that gives me great comfort [to hear], man. I don’t want to say we were unsure about it, but it was probably the most just thing to do … to play this record that he worked on and really believed in. [Cooper] and I had many discussions before this record came out about how this one was definitely our favorite, and the [one we were] most proud of. It was exactly the record we always wanted to make.

Photo Galleries by Dustin Downing

Additional Photos by Joe Gall