Tycho has released the new song “Japan.” And an instrumental only version as well.
“I had just returned from spending some time in Hakone, Japan with my wife’s Japanese relatives,” says Tycho’s Scott Hansen. “I was thinking a lot about the kinds of electronic music instruments I had been using when I first started making music in the late ’90s. With ‘Japan,’ I was trying to recapture a part of that sound and combine it with the imagery and experiences from my trip to Hakone. I sent the song to Hannah with nothing more than the title of ‘Japan’ and she wrote all of the lyrics.”
“Similar to ‘Pink & Blue,’ the instrumental versions are not just the songs with vocals muted, they are different arrangements with different instrumentation and melodies in place of the vocals,” Hansen adds. I wanted to explore the idea of approaching songs from two entirely different perspectives.”
Tycho is also releasing a companion video to the song. The clip was directed by Charles Bergquist (who also collaborated with Hansen on the video for “Ascension”), and filmed in the historic San Francisco neighborhood, Japantown.
The follow-up to 2016’s chart-topping, GRAMMY® Award-nominated EPOCH, WEATHER’s street date announcement was celebrated by the arrival of the second song from the album, “Pink & Blue,” also featuring vocals by Saint Sinner. Both “Japan” and “Pink & Blue” are available now at all DSPs and streaming services following their exclusive “World Record” and “World First” premieres, respectively, on Apple Music’s Beats 1.
“‘Pink & Blue’ is a proper pop song, and a good one at that,” says Stereogum. “Like ‘Easy,’ it features vocals from Saint Sinner, the singer born Hannah Cottrell. But this time, rather than merely adding atmospheric coos to Tycho’s electro-organic textures, she’s breathily intoning lovesick lyrics…Matched with a gently thwacking beat that calls back to early dubstep and eventually ambient synth-pop…”