- Unlike those at many of the other parties taking place in Berlin that night, the crowd at Tycho's recent appearance at Gretchen was consumed with passive meditation. Although touring with a full band for his first European tour, Tycho is otherwise a one-man project from Scott Hansen, who is solely responsible for both the sumptuous soundscapes on record and all graphics and visuals. It's synthesizer-based music that's more content to shimmer than erupt into propulsive mayhem, but the success of the show at Gretchen was as much visual as aural, with Hansen's design work produced under the name ISO50 smearing alongside the bliss-out aesthetic of the tunes.
We arrived at Gretchen around 12:30 AM, while sickly green skulls pulsated on four walls and opener Delfonic tried mightily to roust a sleepy crowd in Box 1. Crosshatched patterns marked the ceiling, and arches placed haphazardly across the room created obstacles for navigation and dancing. Projections lit up most available surfaces to create an immersive atmosphere, though the crowd stuck mainly to the perimeter. Exposed pipes and wiring make up the industrial skeleton of the cramped club, but comfortable couches made it easy to relax: more than a few attendees could be seen catching power naps right up to the start of Tycho's set. Box 2, the back room at Gretchen, was altogether smaller, smokier and sweatier, although none of the openers in either room were able to progress beyond timid knocking to kicking down the door outright.
By the time Tycho took the small stage, it was clear this would be a more traditional concert experience. While DJs are able to soundtrack your adventures across several hours, for Tycho we were viewers as opposed to participants, an unmoving audience for a band rather than a breathing canvas primed for a narrative-like experience. It didn't help that the soundsystem at Gretchen, muddy to begin with, obscured the dynamics and depth of Tycho's music. Hansen switched periodically between synthesizers and guitar but looked far more comfortable knob-twiddling than strumming. Pungent smoke rose from the crowd and settled in front of the projectors, throwing a gauzy blanket over the dance floor. Lacking a microphone, band introductions and brief hellos from Hansen were simply shouted through cupped hands.
Luckily, the performance wasn't content to merely evoke anonymous natural landscapes—the visuals included plentiful images of people in heightened states of emotion. The trio performed for just over an hour, plucking and tapping languidly, though the pulse quickened and basslines became steadily more urgent. Tycho's music can be quite transporting under the right circumstances, but in a clammy nightclub on an early Sunday morning there's only so much you can stomach before starting to crave a little more stimulation than beautiful wallpaper.