Posts in Tycho

We drove from Detroit to Ann Arbor (Ghostly’s home town) last night to sleep off the head trauma suffered at DEMF and get ready for the train ride to Toronto today. Can’t wait to play the Drake again, such a great venue, the three big screens really add to the visual side of things. Congrats to the ticket giveaway winners, check your inboxes, I just sent the confirmations. I also just got the set times for tomorrow night’s show, see you in Toronto!

SV4 8-9
Lusine 9-10
Michna 10-11
Tycho 11-12
Milosh 12-1
Sv4 DJ – close

@ The Drake Hotel Toronto, Weds. May 27th
Buy Tickets ($10 Presale/$15 Door)

Photo by Duchamp

Update: Contest closed! Congrats to the winners, see you at the Drake tonight!

First up, thanks to everyone who made it out to the Detroit show, I had an incredible time and the energy was amazing. With our official duties here in Detroit complete, it’s time to move on to Toronto for the next installment of the Ghostly 10 Year. We’re giving away two sets of tickets to the show at the Drake on Wednesday, all you have to do is correctly answer the following:

Name the cities that hosted the first three Ghostly 10 Year Anniversary Shows.

The first two people to leave the correct answer in the comments will get a set of two tickets each. Be sure to leave your email (will no be published) when you comment so that we can contact you. Also, please answer only if you plan to attend the show.

Good Luck!

GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL :: 10 YEARS :: TORONTO

Wednesday, May 27th
The Drake Hotel (1150 Queen St, W. Toronto, ON M6J 1J3)

Featuring live performances by:

Tycho
Milosh
Lusine
Michna with Raw Paw
+DJ set by SV4

Buy Tickets ($10 pre-sale, $15 door)

Still relaxing in Miami before heading up to Detroit for the Ghostly 10 Year show at Magic Stick this Saturday. I’ll be playing with Telefon Tel Aviv, Deastro and Michna. You can score tickets early for $15 ($20 @ the door) here. Hope to see you out.

After that I’ll be heading up to Toronto for the Wednesday (5/27) show at the Drake. You may have read Sam’s earlier post on that show, but in case you missed it he included a preview of the next Tycho single in the form of Manual’s superb Coastal Brake remix. Check it out!

Ten years ago, I was a lowly, heartbroken college freshman, working with my friends Disco D and Matthew Dear on our first single, “Hands Up for Detroit”. Now, after a decade of hard work, finding an amazing team, and a little bit of luck, we’re fortunate enough to celebrate with our artists and friends.

And the Ghostly 10-year hit parade continues. After we bring the venerable Telefon Tel Aviv to this week’s Detroit date, we’ll be hitting Toronto with Ghostly favorites Tycho, Lusine (who has a bomb new single coming], and Michna along with our very good friend and collaborator, Milosh.

Toronto will be a special date: the Drake Hotel is one of Tycho’s favorite venues (Scott said it was one of his best shows yet.) We always have a great time whenever the team plays there. Tickets are on sale now and discounted here.

Here are a few tracks from each of the Toronto show’s artists – including a Tycho debut.

Lusine – Two Dots

[audio:twodots.mp3]
Lusine has a new album on the way, and (perhaps non-objectively) I’d venture to say it’s his best.
Here’s the first single, featuring the lovely voice of Vilja Larjosto.

Secret Frequency Crew – Neon Bridge

[audio:neonb.mp3]
Here’s a song from Adrian Michna’s old group, Secret Frequency Crew, who were on the classic Schematic label. Forest Of The Echo Downs really caught my attention and made our best-of-the-year list back in ’04. It was a good preview of what was to come (busted jazz, stabbing horns, skittering Miami machinedrums) with Michna.

Milosh – Move On

[audio:moveon.mp3]
Mike Milosh occupies a very distinct space in electronic music with his subtle programming and weak-in-the-knees vocals. He just released a new EP with Paul Phisterer which will make you want to plant a tree it’s so pretty.

Tycho – Coastal Brake (Manual remix)

[audio:cbmanual.mp3]
There’s this guy Tycho who’s pretty good too. He’s got a new single coming out this summer with some great remixes. Here’s an exclusive debut of Manual‘s remix of the forthcoming “Coastal Brake.”

The Back in Black show last night in Tampa was amazing, thanks to everyone for making it out and thanks to the Back in Black crew and Merchline for having me out. The picture above does a better job of summing up the vibe of the show than words ever could, so I’ll leave it at that.

Just flew in to Miami for some R&R before heading up to Detroit and Toronto for the Ghostly shows. (Detroit 5/23 , Toronto 5/26). Hope to see you up there.

After a very early flight this morning I made it into Tampa, FL this afternoon. Loving the weather, hopefully it’s a little sunnier tomorrow though. I’m in town for the Back in Black 2 T-Shirt Exhibit which is going down this Saturday (May 16th) at Czar’s in Tampa (Ybor City). I’ll be playing a Tycho/ISO50 live set around midnight to cap the event off.

The event will feature special limited edition shirts from several artists including myself. You can check out all the shirts here, they’re only available through the end of the month so get yours while they last. The shirts can be had for $25 online and $20 at the event.

Click here for full event info

On a side note, I’d like to thank everyone or the kind comments in the 1000th post, it means a lot. Good luck with the giveaway!

I love simple things like this; you really can’t beat one color on a kraft envelope. Found it at a friend’s house and it reminded me that I really need to get some ISO50 envelopes made up, or at least a stamp.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKtovUAV2Q4

I’m participating the Back in Black T-Shirt exhibit in Tampa, FL this year. The video above has some stuff from last year’s event, they basically bring together a bunch of artists and we all design a black t-shirt. No rules, pretty fun. You can see a small mock-up of my design for the exhibit (above). They should be posting a larger version at the Back in Black site shortly, but I just turned in the artwork so this is all I have for now.

I’ll also be playing a Tycho set as part of the Back in Black 2 party on Saturday, May 16th at the Imperial Theater. I’ll also be bringing out the projectors and doing the live ISO50 visuals along with it. All the details are below:

Tycho / ISO50 Live – Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Location: Imperial Theater – 1420 E. 7th Ave. Tampa, FL
Free entry, 18 & Over
Tycho set starts at 12 midnight.
Back in Black Website

Hope to see you all out!

My Sony R7 Reverb from eBay came today, dead. I replaced a dead battery tonight but that didn’t clear anything up, still just passing a dry signal and a dead rotary encoder knob. Not sure what the issue is, if anyone knows a good Sony tech let me know, I have the schematics. Also need a good Lexicon tech too.

I made the drive out to Sacramento this morning to have the next Tycho single mastered by Eric Broyhill at Monster Lab Audio. In case this is sounding familiar to you, it’s because this is my second pass at this song. I mixed and mastered it last month but after repeated listens, something just wasn’t quite right so I did another mix over the past week and it’s finally wrapped. It’s been a long road, this particular track is sonically very dense and it’s been a very difficult one to mix. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the idea of mastering, it’s the last stage in the production process in which an engineer puts the finishing touches on your music and gets it into the form it will take for the final release — be it CD, MP3, vinyl, or otherwise. That is, of course, a gross oversimplification of what mastering is, if you’re really interested in the details here’s the Wiki article on the subject. It’s a vital step in the process of moving a recording out of your studio and into the real world where every stereo and every room is different, and you hope that your music sounds good on and in all of them. I think most importantly it puts another set of critical ears on your music. By the end of the production process your own ears can become deaf to the subtleties (or not-so-subtleties) and details of the material so it’s vital to have some fresh ears hear it for the first time and recognize it for what it is, not what it has become for you through infinite listens. Ideally, those ears belong to a capable person who knows waaaay more than you’ll ever know about the science and nuance behind how people perceive sound. Mastering can be heavy-handed or light and transparent, and therein lies the problem. Because the process can have such a profound effect on the final product, you have to trust the person doing it. You must have faith that they get what you’re trying to do with a song. It’s a very difficult thing to hand over the reigns to something you’ve put so much of yourself into, to another person who may or may not understand the essence of what you’re trying to do sonically with a song.

I was fortunate enough to meet Eric Broyhill back when I was finishing up my first album and he’s mastered all of my releases since. He’s great at understanding what I am going for and I am always amazed at the night-and-day results when I compare his versions with the raw material. The shots above are from his space which is located inside Hangar Studios (John Baccigaluppi’s studio and the home of TapeOp magazine) in Sacramento. I took these shots during a session a while back so they aren’t really up to date, I think he’s replaced a few pieces in the rack but the interiors are the same and that’s the really impressive thing about the place (unless you’re like me and you can’t stop staring at the Manley Massive Passive). A mastering environment has to be acoustically treated to ensure accurate monitoring of the material. There are many ways to go about this, most involve fiber sound absorbers and diffusers. I’ve always admired Eric’s solution to these problems from both a technical and aesthetic perspective. He was able to build much of the treatments into the structure so that they’re almost unnoticeable but the most prominent element is definitely meant to be noticed. The primary diffuser on the front wall is a giant face he had built by a local artist out of wood blocks set at varying heights (see picture above). This randomly redirects reflected sound waves to avoid phasing issues that can be caused by parallel surfaces. It looks amazing and sounds even more amazing when paired with the incredible Earthworks Sigma monitors he uses. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard a better sounding system than this one.

Now it’s time to finish up the album. I really can’t wait for the day I get to drive back out there, it’s always like a celebration for me at the end of the months spent in the studio slaving away on the music. You get to hand it over and then watch it become complete. If you’re in the market for mastering — which any self-respecting musician should be — definitely check out Eric at Monsterlab, he does incredible work at very reasonable rates. And if you’re not in Northern California I know he can do the work remotely as we did a couple sessions that way. Monsterlab Audio