“E
lectronic music has had 25 years to develop without corporate infiltration, in a vacuum, basically. When hip-hop cruised into mainstream culture, it had three to five years in the underground before it all of a sudden exploded. That culture and community had to grow in the public eye, and with
corporate involvement. Electronic music on the other hand has a legacy of being self-curated by the people that love it, by the people that actually make it.”
These are the energized words of Brian Transeau, who’s otherwise been known to the dance community for the past 20 years as BT. US-born and based, Transeau has long been a vocal advocate of electronic music in his home country. Now that it’s finally made its long overdue crossover into the US mainstream, he’s perfectly positioned as somewhat of a privileged spokesperson on the culture as it continues to evolve at a rapid rate. While many have their reservations when it comes to commercialization, Transeau sees a bright future.
“We know how to appreciate this music. We’ve built this beautifully rich and diverse community of styles, a community that’s filled with inclusion and is actually about something. What’s most exciting for me is having this incredible historical perspective and a 20-year legacy of involvement in dance music culture. I see what we’ve built, and how amazing it is.”
Transeu jumps on the phone with DJ Mag USA as he is gearing up for the release of his ninth studio album, ‘A Song Across Wires’. He’s full of grand words like these, but he definitely has plenty of reasons to be happy. Recognized as one of the true pioneers of electronic music throughout his career, he’s also somewhat of a renaissance man, often toiling away on multiple projects at any one time.
Consistently employed in scoring film and television over the years, currently he’s working on the soundtrack for a television series from director Patty Jenkins, who he previously collaborated with in 2003 on the Academy Award winning movie ‘Monster’. He points to this as a great opportunity to flex his extensive classically trained music skills, which he began developing at an early age at the Washington Conservatory of Music, and later at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Long renowned for his cutting-edge and hugely innovative approach in the studio, as well as a willingness to embrace new technology in both his productions and live performances, he’s also involved himself in the actual programming and development of that technology. Establishing his Sonik Architects company as a means of pursuing some of his own ideas, Transeau sold it to iZotope in 2010, though remains on as a creative director. He had what he describes as a “huge hit” with the company’s Stutter Edit plugin, born out of his own mad scientist love of twisting, chopping and warping vocals in all sorts of wonderful directions.
“It’s literally being used by everyone from Justin Bieber to Armin van Buuren,” he tells us. “It’s ubiquitous. You cannot turn on the radio and not hear it, every single producer on the planet is using it.”
Then there are the DJ gigs. His next two months are crammed with shows across the US, and he’ll be wrapping up September by headlining the trance stage at TomorrowWorld – the North American incarnation of Belgium’s spectacular Tomorrowland, one of the world’s most hyped and popular festivals. Transeau points to this as
an example of how dance culture has developed and evolved outside the sphere of corporate influence.
“That wasn’t done by Gatorade, or by Coca Cola. We did that”.
Transeau describes the state of the dance scene in America at the moment as “unbelievable”, a statement he attributes to how much it’s grown is just a small amount of time. He recalls the irony of how he struggled for the years to gain it any recognition at all. He served, for example, for several years on the board of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization responsible for The Grammys, where he lobbied extensively for a ‘Best Electronic Album’ category to be added to the annual awards.
“And everybody laughed in my face,” he says. “I’m not kidding, they actually laughed out loud at me. I was the one guy there with a dumb haircut, who was actually making current records, and I was sitting there with people who were engineers on Joe Jackson albums. People who have done amazing work, but they’re guys in their 50s and 60s.”
There’s many similar veterans in the scene like Transeau who’ve expressed divisive attitudes about EDM, and the more commercial side of dance music that’s taken hold in North America. Transeau himself terms this side of the music as “brostep and bottle service house music”, though he also views them as an important part of the bigger picture of electronic music. “We have such an incredible cultural diversity in dance music, but it’s obvious why those two aspects would become popular first,” he says. “First of all, there’s a lot of great music in both those categories. People might hate on someone like Avicii, but the truth is they could never write a riff like ‘Levels’. And there’s some amazing music to come out of brostep too.”
“As to why those things have become popular first… It doesn’t take a refined palette to understand this music. Brostep is pure testosterone-fueled, mosh pit rage music, and if I was 16 that’s what I’d be listening to. The other side is that kind of effeminate, very girly house music, which guys also like to go and watch cause there are lots of girls there. But these are the ‘inductors’ into this incredibly broad diversity that we have across the culture. As people’s tastes evolve, everyone from Aphex Twin over to Boards of Canada and Roni Size – everything is going to matter. It couldn’t be a greater time in electronic music.”
Looking at where Transeau himself is placed in electronic culture, he’s had a long-standing association with the trance scene which, similar to commercial EDM, has also suffered its fair share of lashes from the underground dance community over the years. Anthems from the ‘90s like ‘Flaming June’, his seminal collaboration with Paul van Dyk, as well as his euphoric Tiësto hook-up ‘Love Comes Again’, went a long way to cementing BT as a trance artist for many.
However, the truth is that Transeau’s career has been considerably more diverse. His strength as a singer and songwriter has been on display since day one while, alongside his extensive soundtrack work, albums like 2006’s ‘This Binary Universe’ saw Transeau dabbling exclusively in ambient soundscapes. Looking to his seminal ‘Movement in Still Life’ album from 1999, trance anthems like ‘Dreaming’ sat alongside future hip-hop and nu-school breakbeat that was years ahead of its time, as well as deeper gems like ‘Mercury and Solace’, which was readily embraced by progressive house dons like Sasha.
“Thank you for saying that!” Transeau exclaims when we acknowledge this huge diversity across his career. “I used to have sort of a chip on my shoulder being lumped in with the trance scene. It’s not that I mind the affiliation, because I love great trance music, I absolutely
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