gig at ric's - updated

Rics gig flyer

Tycho is playing a show at Ric's on Thursday August 13th! That's right, the night after Ekka Day. As usual at Ric's, entry is free, and the drinks are standard bar prices.

The support act is Twist Oliver Twist, and Dennis Remmer from Transmission Communications will be there spinning some cool electro tunes between bands.

I realise this is a school night, but I would ask that you please make the effort to support us on this one - if the night goes well for the venue it will guarantee more shows for us there in the future, so more chances to see us and hear some new Tycho tunes, and check out the supporting electro acts.

Come along and drink some beers, marvel at Andy's keytar skills, gasp at the stylish old school electronic drums, throw things at Steve, go crazy ;-)

[ Posted Thursday, July 23, 2009 by Ken ]

ten years and a new design

Screenshot of the original splash page

Ten years ago (to the day!) I created "the first unofficial tycho brahe fanboy page" as part of my homepage. It was common practice back then to include a 'what's new' page, which is how I know the date :)

The site was certainly a product of its time, comprised almost entirely of text and including a splash page (with the impractical but fondly-remembered "In the beginning was the voice." intro - shown on the left). It was the days of dialup and the MP3 page held only tiny snippets, and even then we had to explain where to get some software to play them.

Over the past decade that little page has grown significantly and ultimately become about as official as an "unofficial" site can be. It's had several addresses and lived on at least three webhosts that I can recall. It has been up, down, hacked, restored and on a couple of memorable occasions nearly killed by sudden traffic spikes.

In all that time the site has really only had two designs, the original text-only and the slighly-updated grey-bars-and-text design.

So to celebrate the site's tenth birthday I present the third design, an evolution of the minimal look that has served us well for so long - just with the radical innovation of spot colour ;) I've tried to tap into the wonderful clean-and-bold aspects of the synthpop aesthetic. I hope you like it.

There are probably some bugs to iron out and a few corners of the site are still being migrated into the design; if you hit any major problems please drop us a line. But otherwise, it's ready to enjoy.

I must give credit to Leah for helping with this build, providing invaluable design advice and enduring my random "hey can you look at this?" demands. Also thanks to Alastair who helped with the header graphic. Finally I'm compelled to mention an unlikely hero: my tiny little netbook (Asus Eeepc 1000h) which has been used for this entire rebuild, as my desktop machine blew up just before I started.

- heretic

[ Posted Monday, July 06, 2009 by 200ok ]

surgery for arthur linndrum

Ken and Georgina are back from a quick trip to the USA and all the craziness there surrounding the death of Michael Jackson. The trip also included a very quick visit to Mutato Muzika, essentially the headquarters for DEVO. Arthur Linndrum made the trip as well for some repair work and modification, courtesy of probably the world's most famous and respected tech guy, Bruce Forat of Forat Electronics (photo at left - Bruce, Ken and Arthur Linndrum).

Bruce has worked on Linn equipment for a huge roster of famous artists, including Giorgio Moroder, Blondie, Prince, Madonna, all of the various Jackson incarnations including Michael and Janet, Def Leppard, Jam & Lewis - and many, many more. Bruce was kind enough to share a few interesting stories about some of those artists, which I probably shouldn't put into print here - you'll have to ask me at the next gig.

Speaking of which, Tycho is set for a run of shows at Brisbane's legendary Ric's Bar, 321 Brunswick Street Fortitude Valley. The first show is scheduled for Thursday August 13th, as always at Ric's entry will be free. Further details including support act and times will be posted here as soon as they are available.

[ Posted Sunday, July 05, 2009 by Ken ]