In an exclusive interview with 303 Magazine, Scott Hansen — better known as Tycho — delves into the creative journey behind his latest album, Infinite Health. Reflecting on his musical evolution from early releases to his Grammy-nominated work, Tycho shares insights into his artistic process, the significance of standout tracks, and his vision for the future. As he looks back on pivotal moments and anticipates the next chapters of his career, Tycho offers a candid glimpse into what has shaped his music and where he plans to take it next.
READ: Tycho Brought His Burning Man DJ Set to Denver
303: Your sixth album, Infinite Health, comes out this Friday. What were some of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that went into creating this album?
Tycho: I think for this album, I had the luxury of time, reflection, and consideration just because after my album Weather, COVID shut everything down. We had been touring and making albums for a decade straight before that, and that just gave me this moment to reflect, pause, and think about what I wanted my life to be about and what I wanted this album to be about. I had a lot of perspective with this album. I also started a family during that time, and that was just such a meaningful and inspiring experience that I think it just kind of found its way into the music, obviously. I just feel very fortunate that all these kinds of things converged at once, and I was able to have that period of four years where I was just home with my kids and working on music. It was kind of like what I’d always dreamed of being able to do. It was an incredible experience. I wanted the music to reflect that, but I also wanted the music to sort of be a retrospective of all the places I’ve been before and all the musical styles I’ve explored previously.
303: “Infinite Health” is such an interesting title to use for this release. What does it mean to you?
Tycho: For me, finding my way to this balanced place in my life where you stay connected to nature, you stay healthy and you’re working, I’m obviously interfacing with machines. I am like that most of my life just because that’s what ended up being my job. That’s something to try to balance that out. It’s always difficult, and I think mental health, all the stress and anxiety of modern life and all those things, I think for a lot of people in general, that’s a big strength. I wanted to find a way to find balance at this point in my life and be a stronger and healthier version of myself so I could have a more positive impact on my family and my friends and hopefully have that translate into the music. The other thing is that I’ve always heard people tell me that they found a feeling or a positive impact from my music and that’s just always been the most humbling and beautiful thing to hear when you put something out in the world, that it had a positive impact on somebody. The healing power of music is always something I’ve been interested in and inspired by. I think that’s what this album is about, trying to find that space for my own healing because music is my therapy and hopefully for other people too.
303: That’s so beautiful, man. I think your album Dive is one of those albums that has made such a significant impact. I honestly believe it will go down in history as one of the greatest ambient electronic albums of all time. I feel like it’s the Beatles of electronic music. What is it about that album that you feel connects to your audience in such a strong way and has made such a big impact?
Tycho: Oh, well, thank you. That’s beautiful. Yeah, I mean, that’s really hard to be objective about. I think with that album, you’re hearing me find my voice for the first time as an artist, I think, and that only happens once, you know. I think I can hear it in the music. It’s purely going on kind of instinct and feeling and not really thinking about anything. It’s just happening, the music is just flowing out. I think that’s really it. You only get a few opportunities to do that in your career, just because you can’t be doing something for the first time again, that only happens once. I think that, to me, is what that album feels like, me just exploring this new space that I found and having that voice for the first time to say things that I could never say before. So it was just a super inspirational time. I still am amazed that it’s had the impact that it had. It’s super humbling to hear people’s life experiences with it, but for me, it was just kind of me finding my way through this new space that I found and that it was just super beautiful and inspiring.
303: Do you still feel like you connect with that energy from Dive? Do you still feel like it has that power, love, and connectivity to you?
Tycho: I think yeah. When we play the songs live, I’ll still feel them and say, “Wow, this is powerful.” But it’s just also been so long, and that was just such a different time in my life, and, just like anybody, your interest is gonna flow and go in different directions. I don’t know, when I listen to Awake for some reason, that album sounds thoroughly modern to me. I can listen to it now and feel like it maybe wasn’t made that long ago. Dive feels like a time and place, and I think maybe that’s the beauty of it, which is that it’s nostalgic and connects you to this really specific period. I think that it’s hard to connect with it still, but in some of those songs, I definitely feel like, “Oh, I’m kind of back in that moment.”
303: Love that! And speaking of connecting with your audience, you have a Tycho open-source community platform for your fans. It is awesome that you get a passport. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and how it came to fruition?
Tycho: Yeah, so before, Tycho was kind of built on the back of my graphic design career. I was always working on music at night, and that core time was this graphic design blog called ISO50 blog I had. I know blogs don’t mean anything now, but that was social media. That was where people connected, and you could comment in the section and that’s just what you did. This really cool, artistic community grew up around that blog and a few other blogs at the same time, and I just really missed that sense of community. I think I felt it a little bit with Instagram and Facebook in the early days, those kinds of things, leveraging that to promote yourself but at the same time connect with fans. But I felt like over time, the algorithms and all those things have become so advanced that you don’t even know who you’re talking to at this point. It’s just such a weird little subset with those people that you end up connecting with in those spaces, which is amazing, but I just feel like it’s not that direct connection. So, the hope with the open-source thing was to create another space where people could opt into it and have more direct connections to others.
303: So cool. Speaking of your blog, I was looking around at your ISO50 blog. It has lots of beautiful artwork and posts on it. I would recommend anyone, seriously anyone, to check it out. It’s awesome, but it hasn’t been updated in a few years though. Do you think it could make just maybe a one-time comeback for the Infinite Health release?
Tycho: That’s a good point. We’re working with the web developer who built a lot of that. We’re working on turning it into more of an archive, but like a more discoverable archive because there’s just so much cool content there, but it’s so linear, you have to go to the next page, next page, you know what I mean? It’s like we’re talking about eight years of content. So we’re trying to make it a little bit more discoverable to where it presents the older posts and it’s kind of out of order and allows you to kind of dig deeper. That being said, I think there is something nostalgic to posting because Tycho really launched into a bigger consciousness or connected with more people during that era because I had it playing in the background of the blog and I think a lot of creative professionals visited that blog and then they would go use the music in their work, and that’s how I found a wider network of people. I owe so much to the community that was engaged in that. I owe so much of that whole experience to the blog and the people around it. So I do feel like I would like to pay homage to that by posting this album, and that’s a really good idea, so, to answer your question, I will try to do that. Thank you for the idea; I appreciate it.
303: I love that so much! Well, you’ve performed at Burning Man for the last few years, obviously. Performing there seemst so cool. People love it and it’s just one of the highlights of Burning Man every year. Can you just share what that community means to you and maybe a fun memory of performing there?
Tycho: I mean, when I started going, I wasn’t a DJ. I didn’t DJ at all, and I wasn’t even a professional musician. I was just kind of messing around in my spare time, so I owe everything to the experience as far as being welcomed into that community by the people who brought me there for the first time and taught me about the experience. Seeing music through the lens of that community was really just incredible for me. It changed the way I think about what music could mean and how important it could be, just the idea of this whole built environment around art and music, and everybody there is about that. It’s like a city that gets built around it. It’s such an important and cool thing. It’s kind of divisive. People think it’s cool, people think it’s not cool, and some people say it’s commercialized, but the truth is that people in that community, what they built, especially when I was first going, it was just so powerful and beautiful to me that I had to be a part of it, and I think that’s what has kept me going. I think it’s such a pure thing in a way, just people coming together around art, so it means a lot to me to be a part of that community.
Be sure to catch Tycho at Mission Ballroom in Denver on September 25th.