It might just be that we were caught on the hottest day of the year here in London, a day when moving around that much hasn’t been a serious option, the perfect day for these couple of very relaxed tastes of the new Tycho album to have landed here. I mean if it had been peeing down and overcast we’d probably been more up for an angry blast of Maggot Slayer Overdrive‘s Greatest Hits or something, this afternoon however is perfect Tycho listening weather…

‘Infinite Health’ is the rather enjoyable sixth album by Tycho, the project of celebrated San Francisco songwriter, musician and producer Scott Hansen. The album will be released on August 30th via Mom + Pop Records in the U.S. and Ninja Tune in the rest of the world.

“Following previous single Phantom today Tycho presents a soliloquey in electronics, dropping two contrasting tracks that show the breadth of mood and nuance on this intimate and heart-felt new record. “Green and Devices represent the conceptual bookends of the forthcoming album, Infinite Health” he comments. “I wanted to illustrate this tension with a set of sonically contrasting songs.”

Hansen originally wrote “Devices” for a film soundtrack; it ended up on the cutting room floor, but Hansen thought to revisit it, presenting it now as a moody, atmospheric, dance-floor ready cut. For him, the track evokes moving to downtown Sacramento in the late ‘90s, as he fell in love with electronic music and got his creative bearings. “Devices represents the struggle to stay connected to nature and our own humanity in the modern world” he says. “A couple of my first synths were trance-centric,” Hansen recalls of those early days. “I wanted to reference them in some way without literally making a song like that.”

It is juxtaposed with counterpart single today, the gorgeous, downtempo “Green”, which is of utmost personal significance to Hansen — it evokes the American River in California, which he grew up near. “That’s a really nostalgic, kind of meaningful song for me,” Hansen says, adding that his guitar-based compositions list toward introspection. “Green is an elegy to my childhood home, a once-rural town on the outskirts of Sacramento where I spent my youth forging a deep connection with nature” he continues. “I have spent my adult life channeling that experience into music.”

“Green” comes with visuals by Charles Bergquist, who comments: “From my perspective on the video, Scott has a very personal and youthful connection to the American River. We ventured out with our small crew and an array of cameras in a raft on a calm Monday in July. We attempted to create more than a visualiser and more of a “memory film” capturing the essence of what it’s like to ride down the American River on a hot summer day.”

Find the album on Bandcamp