As the head of Tycho — the San Francisco-based electronic-ambient act playing Rams Head Live on Friday — producer/artist Scott Hansen creates moods and atmospheres not with vocals, but rather with lush, dreamy soundscapes.
But on a recent evening last week, Hansen was just another disc golfer trying to get his game on track.
"Can you hold on one second? I have to drive real quick," Hansen said on the phone from Tennessee, a couple of days before his group would play the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. After a 10-second pause, Hansen picked the phone up again. "Hey, sorry. Terrible drive."
For the past year and a half — when Hansen and his groupmates Zac Brown and Rory O'Connor aren't scouting the next disc-golf course — Tycho has performed around the world in support of its 2014 album "Awake." Friday's show will be Tycho's final headlining gig in support of the record, and Hansen said he looks forward to closing this chapter.
"Everything runs its course and 18 months is plenty of time to spend on something," Hansen, 38, said. "I love being on the road and we love playing shows — and that's a big part of what we do — but I also love writing music and producing. So it's time to go back and do some more of that."
Those closely following Tycho's career should not be surprised, as Hansen has long felt at home in the studio. Tycho began as a solo production project for Hansen, whose first career was as a graphic designer under the alias ISO50. After his 2004 debut "Sunrise Projector" and the 2006 follow-up "Past is Prologue," Tycho caught the attention of critics and tastemakers with 2011's "Dive."
"'Dive' was just a buried-alone-in-your-basement-style record," Hansen said. "It was just meandering around these ideas that weren't crystallized song structures."
Hansen still viewed Tycho as a solo project, but the positive response to "Dive" allowed him to expand his concert personnel, which brought guitarist and bassist Brown into the fold. The eventual addition of O'Connor as Tycho's first live drummer was the final piece in the transition to a collaborative trio.
Hansen grew up listening mostly to rock bands, but never envisioned he'd be in one. He saw electronic music as his future. Now, as a three-piece, Tycho straddles the line between the methodical arranging of electronic music and the driving, live dynamics of a living, breathing band. And he couldn't be happier.
"I wanted to work in the capacity of a producer with other people, instead of just working with my own ideas in that way," he said. "That makes the job so much more fun as a producer. You're not sitting there banging your head against the wall when you're stuck on something [alone]."
He misses the autonomy at times, but the fruitful collaborations between the three members matter more, he said. Hansen calls "Awake" — with its densely layered production intertwining with live instruments — the "first true Tycho record." This explains why he's looking forward to getting off the road to focus on the next album: In his eyes, Tycho is just getting started.
"We've all become really close, and started planning the next record," Hansen said. "I think the next record will be even more pushing that direction of working together as a band."
Tycho has already begun the process. In March, Brown and Hansen traveled to Lake Tahoe to jam and toss around ideas. One goal, he said, is to incorporate more electronic sounds from "Dive" that he thought were neglected for "Awake." It's too early to discuss detailed directions the new material is headed — these things can change quickly, he said — but Hansen is encouraged by early results.
"It's in the initial phases but there's some good ideas that we have down so far," he said. "I want to follow it when it goes and not try to dictate things too hard."
After tour and some remaining festival dates, Hansen said, he plans to take a month-long vacation in the fall with his wife to relax. Then it's back to the record-making grind. In "a perfect world," the next album would be released by summer or fall of next year, he said. Regardless of a release date, it is clear Hansen is excited to have Brown and O'Connor along for the journey. Simply, he said, things are more exciting this way.
"It's really fun," Hansen said. "I did [solo work] for a long time, and now it's time to do this, and see where it goes."