Jump to content
Clubplanet Nightlife Community

Bt @ Bleu (11-24-06)


Recommended Posts

Friday November 24

"THE BINARY UNIVERSE TOUR"

BT

btmusic.com / Los Angeles

"Live Performance"

SHAWN MICHAELS

Bleu / Detroit

MIKE CZECH

Music Fresh / Atlanta

"Tag-Team Opening Set"

$3 Wells / Domestics 9-10pm

Tickets @ www.wantickets.com

Doors @ 9pm

Bleu Room Experience

1540 Woodward Ave.

Detroit, MI 48226

313-222-1900

www.bleudetroit.com

www.myspace.com/bleudetroit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Real Detroit Weekly Interview with BT

BT

By

Nov 22, 2006, 23:57

Email this article

Printer friendly page

bt.jpg

Those who see electronic pop music and trance as diametrically opposed to more ostensibly cerebral genres (IDM, glitch, etc.) have a hard time articulating their feelings about BT (Brian Transeau). He is certainly comfortable entering into the realm of pop, even composing tunes for Sting and ‘NSync, and remixing songs by Madonna and Tom Jones. He has also been called the “Father of Trance.â€Â

On the other hand, as anyone who has listened to his latest album, This Binary Universe, knows, BT is capable of composing music that is complex enough to make Schrodinger cry. He is remarkably prolific and the projects he takes on are diverse; he has even composed soundtracks for video games and films (including Monster, starring Charlize Theron). BT will be bringing his distinct, multifarious sound to Bleu on Nov. 24.

Real Detroit: Your new album, This Binary Universe, seems to be much more avant-garde and forward-thinking than much of your previous work. What inspired you to move in that direction?

BT: This record really represents a culmination of many years of interest and studies in a lot of different areas. There are three specifically. The first one is classical music. I studied classical music since I was a kid. I was the kid that had no social life and practiced seven-and-a-half hours a day. This is the first chance I’ve had to really utilize what I’ve studied on a record. All the pieces fall into classical music forms, albeit some more modernist ones. But most of them involve a statement of a theme, a variant of a theme and a recapitulation of a theme.

The second interest of mine is in mathematics and computer software. I started a software company two years ago called Sonic Architect, and we spent two years building a drum machine called BreakTweaker; every beat on the record is done in BreakTweaker. It’s the first ever surround sound drum machine, and it’s going to come out next year. But we built it so I could do the beats that I wanted to do on this album: note figures of 2,048th and 1,024th notes that spline down into 8th note triplets exponentially over a dotted quarter note. And all of this granulation takes place in surround sound. Nothing that’s commercially available can do this yet.

The final interest of mine that influenced this project is jazz. I’m interested in asymmetrical meter and things that aren’t in 4/4 time. So I wrote whole pieces in 9/4 or 7/8. Melodies will come to me in alternate signatures, and I always end up compressing them into 4/4. This is the first time I said, “I’m going to let this rhythm breathe and do its own thing.†It’s probably not going to make any sense to anybody, but it’s really meaningful to me to keep the integrity of the idea intact.

RD: It’s interesting that you mention classical and jazz. Some critics lament the fact that classical and jazz no longer seem relevant to a modern audience in the same way that much electronic music is. Do you think that electronic music is supplanting more traditional forms, or is it just the next logical progression of these seminal genres?

BT: That is such a good question. If you were to ask me about my five-year goal, it would be to make orchestral music cool again. I mean, how many people do you know who are 13 or 14 years old who have ever listened to live orchestral music? For those who are interested in electronic music, I think a lot of orchestral music is either too harmonically dense and challenging (i.e. atonal composers like Shostakovich or Schoenberg) or it’s too consonant and sounds like something their parents would listen to (i.e. Brahms, Bach, Beethoven). But the stuff that’s in-between is amazing. | RDW

BT • November 24 • Bleu Room Experience

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...