Brian Wayne Transeau (born October 4, 1971), known by his initials as BT, is an American musician, DJ, singer, songwriter, record producer, composer, and audio engineer. An artist in the electronic music genre, he is credited as a pioneer of the trance and intelligent dance music styles that paved the way for EDM,Tyler Gray, "Would You Want to Hear This New Circa News Sound Whenever News Breaks?" Fast Company, October 3, 2013. and for "stretching electronic music to its technical breaking point."Curtis Silver, "BT Talks These Hopeful Machines, Math and Inspiration," Wired, February 2, 2010. In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album for These Hopeful Machines.BT, Grammy.com, January 18, 2011. He creates music within myriad styles, such as classical, film composition, and bass music.
BT holds multiple patents for pioneering the technique he calls stutter editing.Clayton Perry, "Interview: Brian Transeau – Singer, Songwriter and Producer," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 26, 2011.Method and Apparatus for Digital Audio Generation and Manipulation, Patent 793587911551696; Time Varying Processing of Repeated Digital Audio Samples in Accordance with a User Defined Effect, Patent 814549611807214 This production technique consists of taking a small fragment of sound and repeating it rhythmically, often at audio rate values while processing the resultant stream using advanced digital processing techniques.Cosmin Lukacs, "Interview With BT aka Brian Transeau," Trance Sound, September 10, 2010. BT was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for his song "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)", recognized as using the largest number of vocal edits in a song (6,178 edits).DJ Ron Slomowicz, "21 Records That Made Me Happy to Be a DJ," About.com. Accessed August 3, 2014. BT's work with stutter edit techniques led to the formation of software development company Sonik Architects, developer of the sound-processing software plug-ins Stutter Edit and BreakTweaker, and Phobos with Spitfire Audio.
BT has produced, collaborated, and written with a variety of artists, including Death Cab for Cutie, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Madonna, Rob Dickinson, Markus Schulz, Armin van Buuren, Sting, Depeche Mode, Tori Amos, NSYNC, Blake Lewis, The Roots, Guru, Britney Spears, Paul van Dyk, and Tiësto. He has composed original scores for films such as Go, The Fast and the Furious, and Monster, and his scores and compositions have appeared on television series such as Smallville, Six Feet Under, and Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.David Battino, Kelli Richards, The Art Of Digital Music, Backbeat Books, 2005, p. 10Damon Fonooni, "Embracing BT," Lunar, 2002.Steph Evans, "Earmilk Interview: BT," Earmilk, August 20, 2013. He was commissioned to compose a four-hour, 256 channel installation composition for the Tomorrowland-themed area at Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016.
Early life and education BT was born in Rockville, Maryland on October 4, 1971. His father was an FBI and DEA agent, and his mother a psychiatrist. BT started listening to classical music at the age of 4Tim Bomba, "Home is where the art is," The Hollywood Reporter, November 14, 2006. and started playing classical piano at an early age, utilizing the Suzuki method.Richard Buskin, "Brian Transeau: Emotional Experience," Sound on Sound, December 2001. By the age of eight he was studying composition and theory at the Washington Conservatory of Music."BT Wears His Lab Coat for These Hopeful Machines," Keyboard, February 26, 2010.Mark Small, "Berklee Today," Berklee.edu. Retrieved August 3, 2014. He was introduced to electronic music through the breakdancing culture and the Vangelis score for the film Blade Runner, which led him to discover influential electronic music artists such as Afrika Bambaataa, Kraftwerk, New Order and Depeche Mode. Transeau also cites hearing the Blue Nile for the first time, and seeing OMD in concert, as significant moments in his youth. In high school, he played drums in one band, bass in a ska band and guitar in a punk group. At 15, he was accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied jazz and enjoyed experimenting, such as running keyboards through old guitar pedals.
Career BT is a multi-instrumentalist, playing piano, guitar, bass, keyboards, synths, sequencers, the glockenspiel, drum machines and instruments he has modified himself. His process for creating songs typically starts with composition on basic instruments, like the piano or an acoustic guitar.Brittany Gaston, "Hot on the heels of controversy, dance music legend BT releases his ninth studio LP," Beatport, August 14, 2013.
1989–1994: Early career In 1989, after dropping out of Berklee, BT moved to Los Angeles, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to get signed as a singer-songwriter. Realizing he should focus on the electronic music he was more passionate about, he moved back to Maryland in 1990 and began collaborating with friends Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi of Deep Dish. Together they started Deep Dish Records. Early in his career, BT worked under a variety of musical aliases, including Prana, Elastic Chakra, Elastic Reality, Libra, Dharma, Kaistar and GTB.
1995–1996: Ima In the early years of BT's career, he became a pioneering artist in the trance genre, this despite the fact that he does not consider himself a DJ, since he infrequently spins records and comes from an eclectic music background. When he started out, such common elements as a build, breakdown and drop were unclassified. BT's was a unique interpretation of what electronic music could be.Rafael De La Torre, "EDM Interview: Magnetic Catches Up With BT To Discuss New Album," Magnetic, June 14, 2013. His first recordings, "A Moment of Truth" and "Relativity", became hits in dance clubs in the UK. His productions were not yet popular in the US, and he was initially unaware that he had become popular across the Atlantic, where UK DJs like Sasha were regularly spinning his music for crowds. Sasha bought BT a ticket to London, where BT witnessed his own success in the clubs, with several thousand clubbers responding dramatically when Sasha played BT's song. He also met Paul Oakenfold, playing him tracks that would make up his first album. He was quickly signed to Oakenfold's record label, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers.Kara Nesbitt, "Elite Daily Talks 'A Song Across Wires' & More With B.T.," Elite Daily, August 21, 2013.
BT's 1995 debut album Ima, released on Oakenfold's label, was a progressive house effort. The opening track, "Nocturnal Transmission", was featured in The Fast and the Furious. The album also featured a song called "Loving You More" with Vincent Covello. Blending house beats with sweeping New Age sounds, Ima helped to create the trance sound.Geoff Boucher, "He's Breaking the Spell of Trance Music," Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2000. "Ima (今)" is the Japanese word for "now". BT has stated that it also means many other things and that the intention of the album is to have a different effect for everyone.
Following the release of Ima, BT began traveling to England regularly. It was during this time that he met Tori Amos. They would collaborate on his song "Blue Skies", which reached the number one spot on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Songs chart in January 1997. This track helped expand BT's notability beyond Europe, into North America. He soon began to remix songs for well-known artists such as Sting, Madonna, Seal, Sarah McLachlan, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Diana Ross and Mike Oldfield.Ravi Baskaran, "Beatific," Broward/Palm Beach New Times, July 13, 2000.
1997–1998: ESCM BT's second album, ESCM (standing for Electric Sky Church Music), released in 1997, features more complex melodies and traditional harmonies along with a heavier use of vocals. The tone of the album is darker and less whimsical than Ima. The album, as a whole, is much more diverse than BT's debut, expanding into drum and bass, breakbeat, hip-hop, rock and vocally-based tracks.
The biggest hit from ESCM was "Flaming June," a modern trance collaboration with German DJ Paul van Dyk. Van Dyk and BT would go on to collaborate on a number of works, including "Namistai" (found on the later album Movement in Still Life), as well as van Dyk's remix of BT's "Blue Skies" and "Remember". "Remember" featured Jan Johnston on vocals, and reached number one on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart."Remember," Billboard Dance Club Songs, Billboard. Retrieved August 3, 2014. BT and Van Dyk also remixed the van Dyk classic "Forbidden Fruit" as well as Dina Carroll's "Run to You", and BT collaborated with Simon Hale on "Firewater" and "Remember."
1999–2002: Movement in Still Life
In 1999, BT released his third album, Movement in Still Life, and continued his previous experimentation outside of the trance genre.Sean Bidder, "Trance Defector," URB, July/August 2000. The album features a strong element of nu skool breaks, a genre he helped define with "Hip-Hop Phenomenon" in collaboration with Tsunami One aka Adam Freeland and Kevin Beber. Along with trance collaborations with Paul van Dyk and DJ Rap, Movement includes pop ("Never Gonna Come Back Down" with M. Doughty on vocals), progressive house ("Dreaming" with Kirsty Hawkshaw on vocals) and hip hop-influenced tracks ("Madskill – Mic Chekka", which samples Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message", and "Smartbomb", a mix of funky, heavy riffs from both synthesizers and guitars woven over a hip-hop break). "Shame" and "Satellite" lean toward an alt-rock sound, while "Godspeed" and "Dreaming" fall into classic trance ranks. "Running Down the Way Up", a collaboration with fellow electronic act Hybrid, features sultry vocals and acoustic guitars heavily edited into a progressive breakbeat track.
"Dreaming" and "Godspeed" reached number 5 and number 10 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, respectively,"Godspeed," Billboard Dance Club Songs, Billboard. Retrieved August 3, 2014. "Never Gonna Come Back Down" reached number 9 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart"Never Gonna Come Back Down," Billboard Dance Club Songs, Billboard. Retrieved August 3, 2014. and number 16 on Billboards Alternative Songs chart,"Never Gonna Come Back Down," Alternative Songs, Billboard. Retrieved August 3, 2014. and the album reached number 166 on the Billboard 200 album charts."Movement In Still Life," Billboard 200, Billboard. Retrieved August 3, 2014.
Long interested in branching out into film scoring, BT got the opportunity when director Doug Liman asked him to score Go, a 1999 film about dance music culture. Shortly after creating the score, BT moved to Los Angeles in order to further pursue film scoring. He also began writing music for string quartets to prove his capabilities beyond electronic music. He was then hired to score the film Under Suspicion with a 60-piece string section. For The Fast and the Furious, BT's score featured a 70-piece ensemble, along with polyrhythmic tribal sounds produced by orchestral percussionists banging on car chassis.
In 1999, BT collaborated with Peter Gabriel on the album OVO, the soundtrack to the Millennium Dome Show in London. In 2001, he produced NSYNC's hit single "Pop", which won a 2001 Teen Choice Award for Choice Single, won four MTV Video Music Awards, and reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 9 on the UK Singles chart. In 2002, BT released the compilation album 10 Years in the Life, a two-disc collection of rarities and remixes, including "The Moment of Truth", the first track he ever recorded.
2003–2005: Emotional Technology