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While popular consciousness has long imagined the sound of the end of the world to be chaotic and violent, Scott Hansen has a considerably different idea of what should be playing while the final embers of civilization slowly burn out.
Though there was nothing overtly apocalyptic about Tycho's set at Edgefield on June 28, it's hard to imagine a better distraction from the world's slow unraveling than the group's gentle assault of sleek techno and kaleidoscopic visuals.
Originally a designer with a flair for warm, oversaturated panoramas and Kubrick-esque retro-futurism, Hansen's spent the past decade figuring out how to translate the feelings evoked by his visual work into danceable audio sensations. Aside from an incredibly bizarre sequence inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, the meticulous pairing of sight and sound remains Tycho's strongest point of distinction.
The hour-long set featured an even spread from his four most well-known albums. Favorites like "Montana" and "A Walk" satisfied the audience's thirst for the dream-like ear candy that's grown Tycho's popularity considerably since 2014's Awake. But newer tracks like "Source" and "Division"—which both lean heavily on interlocking guitar buildups and drummer Rory O'Connor's metronomic rigidity and explosive jazz fills—were solid evidence of the group's evolution from a bedroom project into a cohesive and dynamic live unit that's successfully weaned themselves off laptops.