Tycho is San Fransisco artist and producer Scott Hansen. As Tycho, Hansen blends swirling melodies and stuttering beats into hazy yet triumphant arcs. Known in the design world as ISO50, Hansen is famed for his bucolic, sun-drenched design style, which serves as both a backdrop and mirror for his musical output. Dive, his second LP, is the most diverse musical statement of Hansen’s multi-medium career; the point where his skills as a performer finally catch up with his vaporized vision of a world that doesn’t belong to any particular time or place… but a world with double-exposed sonic landscapes constatly rolling into the horizon.

Tracklisting:

01. A Walk
02. Hours
03. Daydream
04. Dive
05. Coastal Brake
06. Ascension
07. Melanine
08. Adrift
09. Epigram
10. Elegy

“As the title suggests, A Path Less Travelled is an auditory venture beyond the hinterland of the sound worlds inhabited by Minamo and Lawrence English. It’s a collection of rich texture, pulsing vibration and reflective melody. A compelling union of Minamo’s restrained instrumentalism and Lawrence English’s considered sense of space and harmony.

Recorded and produced in Tokyo and Brisbane, this edition is an exchange of mutual curiosity and open ended possibility. Rather than setting out with prescriptive or didactic ideals for their meeting, the musicians looked further afield for influences to shape their interactions. Field recordings, for example, played an important role in contouring the albums qualities and atmospheres. Locations removed and refocused, moments captured and redeployed.

Drawing on Minamo’s sense of pace and sonic spatiality, English devised a number of arrangement strategies to compress, accentuate and expand Minamo’s initial sketches. Carefully editing and adding to the refined and measured contributions, the record took shape over two years of gradual process led production.

A Path Less Travelled collects distant sonic smoke signals passed between one island and another.  via Room40

England’s pioneering ambient house group the Orb has joined forces with David Gilmour, the legendary Pink Floyd member and solo artist, to release a new album, Metallic Spheres, on October 12 via Columbia. This fusion of minimal electronica and psychedelic rock was born when the Orb’s Alex Paterson and Gilmour came together to work on a version of the Graham Nash song “Chicago” for a charity project.

The pair found the work so invigorating that they continued to create music together, joining Gilmour’s electric guitar parts with the Orb’s spacey soundscapes to create a new, challenging work.

The upcoming album is split into two tracks—a “Metallic Side” and a “Spheres Side”—with each piece consisting of five distinct movements. The album will be available in three formats: standard and two-disc CD versions, digital download and 180-gram vinyl.

The two-CD version includes an extra disc, featuring the new 3D60 process, which gives a listener a 360-degree sound experience on stereo tracks when listened to on headphones. Apparently the 3D60 process allows for unlimited spatial audio with sounds coming from all around. It’s like Avatar for your ears!

www.myspace.com/orbisms
www.davidgilmour.com

Legendary producer Brian Eno is set to release his new album through equally legendary record label Warp.

Brian Eno is one of the most acclaimed producers in the music industry. With an art school background, the engineer’s forward thinking ideas have helped push many bands to the paths of greatness.

Fresh from working with U2 and Coldplay, Brian Eno has signed a record deal with Warp. The Sheffield imprint have scooped to nab the producer, who has apparently been working on a new album for some time.

Earlier this year Brian Eno curated a festival in Brighton which he used to expound his ideas of a ‘scenius’ – that musical ideas are filtered through collectives rather than individuals.

Lining up a team of respected producers, fans were able to watch as the ideas shifted and developed. Amongst the engineers recruited for the project was Underworld’s Karl Hyde and Jon Hopkins.

It seems that Hopkins is set to work with Brian Eno on his new album, re-uniting a partnership which has produced some fantastic work recently – the pair joined forces to help Coldplay produce ‘Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends’.

Now Brian Eno has signed to Warp Records to release the album. The label has helped foster a near unparalleled roster including seminal material from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher and Boards Of Canada.

One of the foremost label’s in electronic music Warp can now add Brian Eno to their stellar roster.

Brian Eno is set to release a new album in November.

Electronic duo High Frequency Bandwidth are set to release their debut full-length, Hell Fire and Brimstone, on the British label Malicious Damage.

HFB is the most recent project of Dr Alex Paterson, the brain behind the The Orb and all around electronic music guru. The duo’s other half is Dom Beken, a jack of all trades whose credentials include studio work for David Bowie and music production for everything from TV commercials to Bollywood Films. HFB have so far released several tracks digitally, and produced the score for the Playstation 3 game PixelJunk Shooter, which recently earned them a BAFTA nomination. On Hell Fire and Brimstone, Beken and Paterson continue to blend electronic beats and elements of hip-hop, with guest appearances by Funky DL and Dynamax of Zulu Nation. In keeping with their weird titular motif, all tracks on the new record begin with the letters H, F and B, along with almost everything else in the duo’s catalog so far.

In addition to Hell Fire and Brimstone, Malicious Damage is also releasing HFB’s first three EPs, all of which are untitled. EP 1 hits stores today, and the other two are slated for release later this month and in May.

Tracklist
01. Hundred Forty Billion feat. Dynamax
02. HeptaFleuroButryl feat. Funky DL
03. How Far Back?
04. Harmless Feather Bed feat. Dynamax
05. Hallo From Berlin
06. Hot From Behind
07. Happiness Feels Brilliant
08. Hill Film Blues feat. Dynamax
09. Hey, Fizzy Bubbles!
10. Hell Fire and Brimstone
11. Hidden Foto Banks
12. Holes for Black
13. Harmonic Five (Beatless)
14. Hitchcock’s First Bugle
15. Hitchcock’s First Blunder
16. High Five Brother
17. Huge Fiery Ball

Malicious Damage will release High Frequency Bandwidth’s Hell Fire and Brimstone on July 12th, 2010.
Label: Malicious Damage

The Black Dog: Music for Real Airports

Soma Quality Recordings, 2010

Jana Winderen – Energy Field

1. Aquaculture 18:00

Never content to rest on his laurels, we have here a new stellar release from Boston based composer/sound artist Brendan Murray, the followup to the acclaimed 23five release “Commonwealth.” Murray’s compositions tend to hinge upon drones and this eponymous record is no exception. That being said, this is a work which differs considerably from “Commonwealth” or “Wonders Never Cease”(Murray’s Intransitive release from 2007).

In Brendan’s own words: “This record was recorded after a 6 month break from making solo music. Commonwealth was a pretty big undertaking over a few years, and I wanted to see if I could take some of the long range deliberation out of my process and trust decisions that I normally rethink over and over. I also worked under a deadline for the first time.

The six tracks represent the first real overhaul of my approach since I started. I found myself breaking a lot of self-imposed rules and working very quickly. I decided to incorporate recognizable instrumentation, mainly piano and guitar.
I made some shorter pieces and use lots of differentrecording techniques to give each track it’s own character while making it sound like a record. It definitely sounds like my music, but it’s a more delicate in some places than anything I’ve ever released. I regard the ideas as refined and realized, but each track inhabits its own space, almost like chapters in a book.

It’s self-titled or untitled, depending on how you care to think of it. The images in the artwork could also work as symbolic titles. I have left that very open, because the titles of the pieces are purposely evocative. They are also rather personal and refer to specific moments in my life, whether real or imagined. I plan on making a couple of more records like this, as well as continuing to make large, complex pieces. I don’t regard this as a detour. Some people have told me that this music sounds dark, others have told me it sounds really paranoid. I think it’s a weirdly optimistic record.”

Building up to the release of Tycho’s forthcoming album, ‘Coastal Brake’ gets the single treatment, delivered with remixes from Danish shoegaze-tronica hero Manual, Ghostly regular Lusine and cosmic disco enthusiast Hatchback.

The original sees producer Scott Hansen looking beyond the Boards Of Canada influences that tended to characterize early works. Those warm, vintage-styled synths are still very much present, but the upbeat tone of the production and its deep, warm rhythm section lend a broader appeal.

The Manual remix sounds very much as you’d expect, full of reverberant splashes and Cocteau Twins-inspired additional instrumentation, while Lusine supplies a streamlined, very precise electronic makeover. In a more Balearic mode, Hatchback throws in some shimmering disco, resulting in arguably the most successful of all the remixes.

Tracklist:

1. Coastal Brake
2. Coastal Brake (Manual Remix)
3. Coastal Brake (Hatchback’s Cosmic Caviar Dub)
4. Coastal Brake (Lusine Remix)

sigur rós front man jón “jónsi” thor birgisson will be releasing his debut solo album, entitled go, on parlophone records on march 22nd 2010 (xl recordings on march 23rd 2010 in north america). co-produced by jónsi, alex somers and peter katis (the national, interpol), mixed by tom elmhirst in london, and recorded in iceland and connecticut, go is exhilarating, joyful and fearless. the record also features arrangements and piano playing by acclaimed composer nico muhly.

jónsi has spent more than a decade writing epic compositions with sigur rós, creating some of the finest, most acclaimed albums of the last ten years. the choice to make an album of solo recordings came together as a solution to a backlog of songs jónsi had written that didn’t seem to fit within the sigur rós context. the first collection of this material saw its release earlier this year in the form of a record called riceboy sleeps, an instrumental album made with his partner, alex somers. go, however, is a different beast entirely. ecstatic, dramatic and alive, it features jónsi’s signature vocals throughout, with the majority of the songs sung in english.

when he began working on go, jónsi initially though he would be making a low-key, acoustic album until, as he says, “somewhere along the line, it just sort of exploded.” that explosion resulted in sheer aural fireworks. not a straight ahead pop record, nor rock, folk, ambient or electronic, it encompasses all of these to create an expansive musical palette that’s been brought to life by jónsi alongside a number of free-spirited collaborators.

chief among these is nico muhly, the philip glass protégé who is renowned for his work with björk, antony & the johnsons, bonnie “prince” billy and grizzly bear. muhly has arranged all the songs on go, bringing strings, brass and woodwind to dance playfully alongside his offbeat piano playing. add into the mix the percussive genius of samuli kosminen, whose original drumming powers many of the songs along, and you have a sonic landscape that bears little relation to anything else around today, yet explodes from the speakers with sheer happiness and wonder, wide-eyed and eager to be heard.

go completes a personal journey for jónsi away from the wordless and near-brutal sonic monoliths of sigur rós’ untitled ( ) album, and is a bold stride beyond the career-redefining pop of “hoppipolla”, and even the explosive percussive assault of the last album’s “gobbledigook.” above it all sits jónsi’s voice, which has never been more impressive or breathtakingly arranged; here spectral and wraithlike, there fulsome and gorgeously warm, or other times, his backing vocals swoop and dart everywhere in a giddying array of crazed inventiveness. indeed, go is also one of the most joyous collections of songs you’re ever likely to hear. it’s an album that sounds like an artist entirely out on his own, doing exactly as he pleases, and from the creator of some of this decade’s most inventive, evocative music, we would expect nothing less.

jónsi will be bringing these songs to life with an extensive world tour throughout 2010. for more details on this, along with exclusive jónsi news, music and information, please check out www.jonsi.com

“go” tracklist

1. Go Do
2. Animal Arithmetic
3. Tornado
4. Boy Lilikoi
5. Sinking Friendships
6. Kolnidur
7. Grow Till Tall
8. Around Us
9. Hengilas