Tycho – Weather

Fresh from picking up a Grammy nod with the Billboard-topping Epoch, the San Francisco-based electronic music project led by Scott Hansen, Tycho return with their fifth studio album, featuring vocals from Hannah Cottrell, aka Saint Sinner.

Previously an instrumental project, Hansen has described Weather as a chance to "finally fulfill what had been a vision of mine since the beginning: to incorporate the most organic instrument of all, the human voice."

Opener Easy sees Cottrell nudge her way gently into the track over an earworm of a minor key synth riff, while Into the Woods summons the globetrotting sounds of Gold Panda, a distant heat haze flooding the mix as if you’re sat watching the sun go down on some tropical island.

Lyrically Cottrell can sometimes swing and miss: 'You've been asking all about my diet / Daily I find the time to be quiet' probably isn’t going to be in the running for a Pulitzer, but she’s great at summoning sultry warm evenings, cooing over skittering percussion on Pink & Blue and dispatching a cool travelogue on Japan. Her best vocal though comes on Skate, a plea to roll down the window and feel the breeze with the instrumentation fading into the background save for little more than chiming guitar.

After 13 years in which Tycho has grown from a part-time solo project into a Billboard-charting success story, Weather sees Hansen and co teasing out some new strands to their winning formula of blissful electronics. At just eight low-stress tracks, this isn't so much a headlong dash for horizons new as it is a gentle evolution, but you could do far worse than kick back and enjoy the weather.

Listen to: Skate, Easy