Dynamic Symmetry

I had been revisiting his work recently and today is Brian "BT" Transeau's birthday so why not take the opportunity to look at his recent work. The past year he has seen the release of two BT albums, one being the score to EA Sports Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 and more recently he has put out a high minded DVD/CD project This Binary Universe. I've been following BT since his Tori Amos collaboration led to his debut album getting a belated released in the US, and while he has ups and downs over the years including the terminally flawed Emotional Technology I've found him worth watching. The Tiger Woods soundtrack sounds like a something he simply didn't invest much time or creative energy into. I don't know that anyone should expect an artistic statement from a golf video game soundtrack but if anything it's disappointing because it has a track titled "Everything's Gone Green" that has nothing to do with the New Order song of the same name. Shame on you Mr. Transeau. You know it's wrong to lead me on like that.
This Binary Universe is definitely the artistic statement of the two releases. A lengthy article in Keyboard magazine, which is quoted as if it were an actual review in the trailer for the project attached to this post, attempts to define the project as:

Seven compositions, each about 15 minutes long, combine acoustic instruments, synth parts played real-time from keyboards, and “cut-and-paste, musique concrète type stuff,”

: all set to visuals created specifically for the project. Ambient symphony is another take on the music and the arty-composer-that-went-to-Berklee side of BT in full effect here. Stop by the album's myspace and watch the second video for a segment from the DVD. It's good stuff and if you don't like it don't worry his next "normal" album is due out early next year. Apparently that has plenty of "beautiful jangly guitars all over it" with guest spots from Imogen Heap (yay!) and Stewart Copeland (boo!).



Fun Fact: In addition to a career in music that has involved much soundtrack work BT was also an Executive Producer on the highly staged reality show "Tommy Lee Goes To College".