released for the first time on vinyl is max richter’s emotive and minimal score to damon lindelof’s tv series about a post-apocalyptic global event where 2% of the world’s population disappears without explanation. richter’s approach explores the feelings of the protagonist’s family, the garveys, through intimate, small scale music. he tackles this psychological landscape by bringing a ritual quality to the score, while themes of departure and loss are represented by a sense of sonic decay, relying on the instrumentation of a few sustained tones on pianos, harps and celesta. max richter is a classically trained composer that defies boundaries. trained at the royal academy of music and finishing his studies under the tutelage of avant-garde composer luciano berio in florence, richter’s career has followed many paths. his musical output ranges from ballets (wayne macgregor’s infra), reinventions of classical works (vivaldi’s four seasons), collaborations with the future sound of london, roni size and vashti bunyan to writing scores for film and tv (waltz with bashir, lost and found, last days on mars) and solo work (memoryhouse, the blue notebooks, 24 postcards in full colour).

the title track on tychos long-awaited dive lp is just that — a ripple effect record that sounds like three songs in one, as if sound/graphic designer scott hansen just discovered progrock and decided to apply its winding passages to his own singular blend of sinewy synths and bleached beats. its also the first tycho song to feature a prominent guest musician, guitarist zac brown, in this case, who paints outside the lines of hansens halcyon hooks with restless rhythms and monorail-like riffs. the >dive< single fleshes things out even further, as keep shelly in athens and memoryhouse — both rising underground artists in their own right — cut hansens cloud-scraping composition in half and slow his cruise control chords down to a crawl. the misty vocal melodies are still there, but they are now floating through an embryonic assembly of jittery cicadas, rusty gears, and lean loops that are both welcoming and a bit woozy. the sonic equivalent of staring at the sun for too long, really, or two sides of the same cracked mirror.