Tycho October 4, Brooklyn Bowl.
Bay Area post-rock/electronic act Tycho had only performed live in Las Vegas once before, and that 45-minute sunrise set was so gorgeous and intoxicating, it was the highlight of the entire Life is Beautiful Festival in 2014—which made the prospect of Tuesday night’s local headlining debut at Brooklyn Bowl all the more compulsory. And the quartet—led by Scott Hansen, who is to Tycho what Trent Reznor is to Nine Inch Nails—didn’t disappoint, re-creating the transportive atmosphere of that performance two years ago while offering new dynamics on which one could both chew and groove.
Hansen and company came to Las Vegas primarily to share Epoch, the third chapter of an album trilogy, which was surprise-released late last week. It only takes a spin or two to identify its role as a transitional work that travels down different sonic paths despite being rooted in Tycho’s established aesthetic; it’s definitely the most post-rock work in the discography as well. You could spot the artistic progression in the setlist’s first song alone: “Division”—also Epoch’s first single—began with a 7/8 drumbeat and a nervy, buzzing chord progression reminiscent of the dominant, looping bass riff on Radiohead’s “National Anthem,” to almost agitated effect. It was eventually counterbalanced, however, against a series of massaging guitar and keyboard melodies, all blanketed with synth winds—in other words, classic Tycho—that eventually coalesced to give the song its uplift.
Even more traditional to the band was the next song: the glowing, beachy and dissonance-free title track from sophomore album Dive, a mostly midtempo gem with a more conventional house rhythm, which initiated the gentle swaying motion that defined most of the crowd’s movement for the 90-minute set. Another distinction between the two tracks—and between most of Epoch and earlier Tycho compositions—was how easy it was to get lost in the latter, compared to the desire to hyperfocus on the precision and interweaving parts of the former.
Tycho’s generally clean and relatively minimal sound easily tips off the duties and output of each individual player with little-to-no confusion, while also allowing easy absorption of the group effort. During “Source”—also from Epoch—the guitar leads from Hansen and Zac Brown weren’t so interlocked that you couldn’t suss which one each musician was plucking out. Those leads danced atop rat-a-tat snare work by drummer Rory O’Connor and long synth notes from multi-instrumentalist Billy Kim. The result was enjoyable as an emotional work of art, but it also felt like a masterclass in Tycho’s craftsmanship.
And speaking of minimal: Complementing the escapist sounds were the visuals projected on the screen behind the band, some merely culled from the spare, geometric iconography—mostly circles and trapezoids, both employed on the Epoch cover—Hansen carefully chooses and carries through album/single cycles. Before he became a full-time musician, Hansen was a graphic designer, and he has made those shapes not only thematic, but inextricable from the music itself. He’s also quite fond of the sun—one of the reasons he often uses circles in the band’s iconography—and on Tuesday night, certain songs were joined by images of a girl playing with her hair in front of an orange sky (“A Walk”) and surfers awaiting that next wave just after dawn (“Hours”). And then there were the unmistakable scenes from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1970 cult classic El Topo during “Spectre,” a rare moment of supplemental surprise during a standard Tycho representation.
Another surprise: the respectable turnout. While not packing Brooklyn Bowl’s downstairs level, the crowd nonetheless filled in the sunken GA floor in front of the stage. (Heralded singer-songwriter Kurt Vile barely got half that during a Monday show last month.) Apparently there were enough people in need of a midweek escape and bliss, which Tycho skillfully and heartily supplied.
