Brian Wayne Transeau (born October 4, 1971 in Rockville, Maryland) is an electronica musician, better
known by his stage name, BT. When recording with other artists he has used the aliases Kaistar, Libra Dharma, Prana, Elastic
Reality, Elastic Chakra, and GTB.
BT is a highly influential electronic musician. His techniques are frequently groundbreaking and
trend setting. He is very well known in production circles for his signature technique, the stutter edit, also known as the
BT stutter. This technique consists of taking a small sample of a sound and then repeating it in a musical as well as mathematical
way. His signature sound is also achieved by means of a method of sound manipulation called granular synthesis using Karlheinz
Essl's REplay PLAYer software where sounds are broken apart into tiny pieces and rearranged to create very chaotic and wild
soundscapes. This effect is demonstrated very well in some of the vocal bits on the song "Pop" that he produced alongside
N Sync, particularly at the beginnings and ends of phrases. He is also one of the direct pioneers of time correction techniques.
Time correction is where a producer takes a series of samples with random occurrence (such as rain) and time corrects each
individual hit according to a rhythmic and mathematical grid, much like the BT stutter. The result is the seemingly random
pulses take on a rhythmic form as well as a developing pattern, but retain their chaotic unpredictable character.
He has been playing piano since the age of 3 and attended Berklee College of Music for one year before
dropping out and moving to Los Angeles, California.
Transeau's music was not well received in the United States, so he moved to Europe where his music
was discovered by Sasha, a British DJ who introduced BT's music to the club circuit. Instantly popular, BT's 1996 album Ima
helped shape the future of the burgeoning progressive house scene as it merged with, and later came to define, the trance
music style. Notable on the album IMA was a collaboration with singer/songwriter Tori Amos called Blue Skies, which rose to
the top of the dance charts and was released as a single.
While Ima was comprised solely of the "progressive" sound, 1997's ESCM was more experimental (although
it still produced several big records for the electronic dance music scene). BT's 1999 album Movement in Still Life continued
his experimentation outside of the trance genre he helped to define through his more adventurous work and the more structured,
commercially viable tracks. This album also featured a strong element of nu skool breaks, a genre he helped define with the
classic Hip-Hop Phenomenon, in collaboration with Tsunami One. 2003 saw the release of Emotional Technology featuring more
vocal tracks than usual, including six with vocals by Transeau. He also provided vocals on the DJ Tiësto single "Love Comes
Again," and recently worked together with David Bowie on the song "(She Can) Do That," recorded for the movie Stealth (2005),
which BT also composed the score for.
In recent years, he has also moved into film scoring, including Go (1999), Under Suspicion (2000),
Driven (2001), The Fast and the Furious (2001), and Monster (2003). He recently completed the score for Stealth (2005), as
well as the score for Underclassman (2005).
Unlike many artists working in electronica, Transeau frequently performs his music live. In 2004,
he did a very popular "last night of summer" concert at BT Tower (named for British Telecom).
He has a young daughter, Kaia, as well as a girlfriend, Ashley. He lives and composes his works in
his Los Angeles home studio.
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Musical Progression
The variety of BT's music is considered one his most notable qualities. In the early portion of his
career (roughly 1995-2000), he was generally referred to as a trance artist; and despite never having graced a pair of decks
by that stage of his career, he appeared in DJ Mag's 1998 Top 100 DJs Poll. He has been consistently experimental in his music,
making it impossible to classify him in any one genre.
In 1997, BT released ESCM, which featured more complex melodies and more traditional harmonies along
with a heavier use of vocals. The tone of the album is darker and less whimsical than Ima, the individual tracks being much
tighter and cohesive. The album, as a whole, is much more diverse than BT's debut album. While Lullaby for Gaia and Remember
(both featuring Jan Johnston) are code trance music, other tracks find their way into the canons of other electronic sub-genres
that were emerging in the mid-nineties. Love, Peace, and Grease is breakbeats, Firewater and Orbitus Terranium are considered
house, Flaming June (probably the most famous single of the album) and Nectar are examples of hard trance. The most experimental
track on the album is Solar Plexus which is easily divided into two parts. The first part is dark and suspenseful with a raging
crescendo chorus, and features gritty vocals that proclaim "I burn!" in the chorus. This half of the song has been featured
in numerous film trailers, including Blade 2 and Hellboy. The second half of the song is slow and introspective, with a single
piano and slowly building electronic accents. The vocals in the second half are clear and quiet to the point of obscurity.
The mystery of what the lyrics to Solar Plexus actually are has been a sort of in-joke among BT fans since the album's release.
BT's third album, Movement in Still Life, moved into less experimental music and was somewhat worrying
to some fans on the artist's message boards. The strong hip-hop influence on Madskillz-Mic Chekka and Love on Haight Street
was the cause of this worry as hip-hop and trance are essentially complete opposites in style. Smartbomb provided the missing
link between BT's previous work and this new rap-infused work, as it bore a strong resemblance to Solar Plexus Part 1 and
included a lyric sample from Love on Haight Street. The album hits a spectrum of genre-work. Shame, Satellite, and Running
Down the Way Up lean towards the alt-rock, while Godspeed and Dreaming fall into classic trance ranks. Never Gonna Come Back
Down (featuring vocals by Mike Doughty) was the most popular single from the album, and appeared on the Gone in 60 Seconds
soundtrack in radio edited form. Mercury and Solace, while failing to achieve the commercial success of Never Gonna Come Back
Down, is the most commercially remixed song from the album . Jan Johnston sang vocals on this track
and others, with Kirsty Hawkshaw also making significant vocal contributions to Running Down the Way Up and Dreaming.
Shortly after Movement in Still Life BT raised the production bar with 'Pop', a collaboration with
N Sync. An instrumental version can be heard/viewed here.
Emotional Technology succeeded in being BT's most experimental album, to the great relief of fans.
While the album opens with the hip-hop infused Knowledge of Self, the rest of the album features hooking riffs with an almost
excessive amount of electronic accent. Superfabulous (featuring vocals by Rose McGowan) is the least of the songs in that
respect, and yet it breaks in the middle of the song for a brief spoken word conversation about Rose flipping off someone
at the Getty Museum. The big single from the album, Somnambulist, draws heavily from the breakbeats and new wave dance of
New Order and Depeche Mode, whom BT has cited as major influences. The rest of the album fairly escapes genre labeling, from
the dark guitar work of Circles, to The Only Constant is Change which is reminiscent of Satellite, the album blends genres,
changes genres in mid-track, and never fears the atonal.
His fifth studio album, This Binary Universe, will be his first studio album released in 5.1 surround
sound. His first release in 5.1 surround sound was his score to the film Monster.
His as-yet untitled sixth album will be released in late 2006, and will feature Imogen Heap, among
others.
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Discography
Albums
Ima (1995)
ESCM (1997)
Movement in Still Life (1999)
Movement in Still Life - US release
with alternate tracks (2000)
Emotional Technology (2003)
This Binary Universe (2006)
Singles and EP's
"Loving You More" (1996)
"Embracing the Sunshine" (1996)
"Love, Peace and Grease" (1997)
"Flaming June"
(1997)
"Remember" (1997)
"Godspeed" (1998)
"Mercury and Solace" (1999)
"Dreaming" (2000)
"Smartbomb" (2000)
"Never Gonna Come Back Down" (2000)
"Shame" (2001)
"Somnambulist" (2003)
The Technology EP (2004)
Compilations
R&R (Rare & Remixed) (2001) - A collection of BT's remix work.
Still Life In Motion (2001)
10 Years In the Life (2002) - "Best of" album.
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VIDEOS & CLIPS (click on the title to play)
