Album Review: Tycho - Epoch

What a day for music - Tycho and Bon Iver dropped new albums. I mean there is literally nothing else which could make this day any better.

I've been anxiously waiting for Epoch's release ever since they shared "Division" and album's title track "Epoch", so it was a real pleasure when I got my hands on it. I've been a Tycho fan from the early Past is Prologue Scott days, so this really means a lot. This music has helped me through a lot and meeting the band a few years back and doing an interview was an insane experience.

During the past few days, the band has been posting album's artwork elements on social media, which was a nice prelude to that surprising album release today. Even before digging into the music, I feel the need to say (time and time again) - Scott's visual work is inspiring.

A lot has changed in those 10 years since Scott created Tycho and it was a real happiness to find this when opening my Facebook:

I'm very pleased to announce the release of the fourth full length Tycho album, Epoch. 10 years ago next month the first Tycho record, Past is Prologue, was released and it's been an incredible journey. There's nothing I could possibly say to fully express my deep gratitude to all of you for making this past decade possible. I truly hope you enjoy this music and make it your own.

One of the best things I love about Tycho is the feel of constant change when it comes to their sound. From purely electronic-driven one man project to a full-blown and very instrumental-driven band - things are always a surprise.

The album has an extremely strong kick-off and as soon as I hit play on "Glider" I was sent out to space or at least to some distant, unfamiliar place... and that journey did not stop for a second throughout Epoch's 43 minutes.

Just like when I wrote back in my "Epoch" track review, the record as a whole has a mysterious / desert-like vibe. It's not a surprise this track carried the name of the album. Of course every mysterious / space-desert place has its dark corners and for me that was "Receiver". The somehow drone/post-rock inspired track intro is just... staggering.

As usual, this won't be a track-over-track review. Especially when it comes to the Ghostly International artist, I feel there is a strong sense of continuation and soundscape build-up when creating music and this should be reflected when firstly digesting the album (at least in my humble opinion).

The one thing I have  to say about this new direction of Tycho - it just makes me extremely happy to witness the evolution of a musical project and time and time again to feel surprised and sent into new musical universes. Epoch is music from out of space.

Enjoy.