by Ben Hogwood, with text lifted from the press release

Tycho has announced and released Forge, the follow-up to (and early incarnation of)  Boundary Rider, his recent collaboration with Paul Banks of Interpol.

Speaking about the track, Tycho (aka Scott Hansen) says: “Boundary Rider started life as a demo called Forge, a driving open-ended extension of the Epoch-era sound. I originally sent a pretty stripped back version to Paul Banks to see if he was interested in contributing vocals, which later informed the direction of that arrangement. After completing that version, I revisited the original to see if I could draw a compelling instrumental out of it. This is sometimes difficult with a song written with vocals in mind — it’s hard to find the elements to tie it all together once the vocals are gone. But with this one it ended up feeling nicely balanced just by pushing Zac’s guitars to the front a bit, retaining the isolated sound of the vocal version while opening up more space for the instrumentation to breathe.”

As you will hear while listening to the track below, Hansen’s point is proved with music of warmth and poise, yet also positive energy – such as that felt with the onset of Spring-like weather here in Britain!

Published post no.2,820 – Thursday 5 March 2026