Tycho: Awake (clear vinyl) [GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL]

Why you'll love it

This limited edition puts Awake on clear vinyl from Ghostly International. It reached No. 23 on the Billboard 200, Tycho's highest US chart placing, and had sold more than 70,000 copies by 2016.

This edition

• Clear vinyl
• Limited edition

About the album

Scott Hansen spent years making bedroom electronica as Tycho before deciding it needed a band. On Awake he brought in Zac Brown on bass and guitar and Rory O'Connor on drums, and the hazy, sample-built sound of the early records opened up into something warmer and more muscular. Hansen still wrote and recorded it himself, so the live drums and bass guitar arrive wrapped in his trademark sun-bleached synths and tape-warm textures.

The title track sets the tone with chiming guitar lines over a steady pulse, "Montana" builds to a rush, "Dye" drifts, and "Spectre" and "Plains" bring things home in a glow. It's the middle part of a trilogy that runs from Dive (2011) to Epoch (2016), and it arrived on Ghostly International in March 2014. Awake is the brightest and most propulsive of the three, the one we reach for on long drives. A remix album followed in 2016, but the originals are the ones that get played most around here.

Hansen also made the artwork, so if the sleeve looks suspiciously like the music sounds, that's why.

Also at Kops: more Tycho on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Ghostly International (cat# GI 208 LP), a reissue of the 2014 album.