BT – Every Other Way (buy this song)

Welcome back!  It’s been a long time since I actually updated the MSMOTD.  It was derailed initially because of the production and release of my album, and then continually postponed due to academic responsibilities. However, it is now back and will hopefully be updated regularly!

One of my first MSMOTDs was BT’s “Antikythera Mechanism”, from his award winning and brilliant glitch-symphony “This Binary Universe”.  However, as incredible as that album is, it is really just one facet of Brian Transeau’s musical taste and ability.  He began as a trance/house producer and has been continually building on that base.  TBU was a fairly radical departure, but his new album “These Hopeful Machines” (do I sense a theme?) brings everything full circle and combines the new techniques and style he employed on TBU with his older dance and ballad sensibilities.  It’s a huge double album, ranging from full-on house meant for the dance floor, to TBU-style electronica, to glitchy alternative and beyond.  I’ve been waiting 4 years for this album and while it’s not TBU part 2 (perhaps still forthcoming), I am well pleased.  So are other reviewers it seems, with wired.com giving it a 9 out of 10 and saying “If you’ve never liked electronica before, this is the release that could change your mind.”  High praise indeed.  BT is is a very prolific writer and this album is a great showcase of that talent, while remaining quite cohesive.

BT's latest album - "These Hopeful Machines" (2010)

I actually heard Every Other Way first as a remix by Armin Van Buuren (see below) on Universal Religion 4, a fantastic trance mix album released by Van Buuren in 2009.  It’s a fantastic remix, but it didn’t really prepare me for the album version.  Every Other Way (featuring vocalist “Jes”) is an ethereal, beautiful and glitchy ballad which flows between soaring melodies and glitchy breaks which dig into the centre of the earth.  Clocking in at over 11 minutes, it’s an epic journey, but one I keep taking over and over again, savouring every note from the opening chimes to the electronic wash at the end.  Nobody else writes music quite like this, and that’s one reason why I love BT so much.  This music is, in my opinion, immediately accessible and pleasant to the ear, but also pushes boundaries and experiments with sound in new ways.  What wizardry he uses to craft such raw emotion from electronic audio stuttering is beyond the ken of man (at least this man), but however he does it, it definitely pushes all my buttons.  I love the album version, but you can also find the radio edit (not as good) on youtube.

(BT feat. Jes – Every Other Way (Armin Van Buuren Remix)) (buy this song)

As one of the top house/electronica/dance producers in the world, BT’s releases are remixed over and over again, as indicated by the AVB remix of Every Other Way.  A number of other songs from “These Hopeful Machines” have also been remixed, including the first single (and one of my favourites from the album), Suddenly. Suddenly is actually the first track on the album, and is a much more upbeat and dancy tune than Every Other Way.  With BT himself on vocals, the original track is a fantastic melding of BT’s signature house sound and a harsher alterna-rock vibe, all brought together with robotic precision by BT’s production and trademark stuttering glitches (how I love thee!).  However, he’s also released the song as a single along with a bunch of other remixes, including one by the all-powerful Klayton Scott (aka Celldweller – check out the Celldweller MSMOTD)!  His version is even more glitchy than BT’s original production (if that’s possible), and adds a dirty industrial sheen to the song which really changes its character.  Great driving music, if you plan on weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds with no regard for human life.  The video is embedded below.

Lastly, I’ve included one of my other favourites from the album, the complex and brooding Le Nocturne De Lumiere. This song is for all of those who adored “This Binary Universe”.  The first half of the song features a dark and throbbing beat, surrounded by a dense cloud of dreamy, stuttering accents and melodies which really have to be experienced with good headphones.  The second half deconstructs the beat and breaks the melody open into a shimmering wash of sound which is then built back up into the main theme.  This song is the definition of “intelligent dance music”: unique, non-repetitive, experimental and interesting, but still inherently danceable, beautiful and easy to listen to.  Fortunately there are several other tracks like it on “These Hopeful Machines” for those of us who really want more of TBU.

(The Celldweller remix of Suddenly by BT) (buy this song)

BT is one of the only artists who can successfully mix crunchy house beats and breaks with vast, dreamy soundscapes which simultaneously soothe and energize.  While this album is no TBU part 2 (despite songs like The Rose of Jericho and Le Nocturne De Lumiere), it is an incredible work in its own right and is one of the best albums of the year so far.  BT’s myspace page (see below) has a number of other songs from the album, so definitely go check them out and then buy this album if you like it.

Hope people still check the page from time to time, and enjoy the new music I’ll be posting in the near future.

- Mons

More music from BT

BT – Le Nocturne De Lumiere (buy this song)

Further info about today’s MSMOTD

Official Website: http://www.btmusic.com/ (not much info here)

Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_(musician)

Myspace Page (with more music): http://www.myspace.com/btnetwork

Featured Review: Curtis Silver’s 9 out of 10 review of “These Hopeful Machines” on wired.com

Support BT (and me!) by clicking these links to buy “These Hopeful Machines (Amazon MP3 Exclusive Version)” or “the physical cd of These Hopeful Machines” from Amazon.com! See the “buy this song” links above to get the MP3s for the individual songs I’ve included in the post.

Trifonic – Lies

I’m so excited about posting this MSMOTD!  Not only am I finally done with school and so now have the time to update regularly, but this group, this album, is really special.  So special that I had a hell of a time trying to single out a single track to feature.  In the end, I chose Lies, which was the first song of theirs that I heard, and still one of my favourites.  It’s also a good intro to the album.

One of the best albums of 2008.

Trifonic is a musical duo (the brothers Brian and Laurence Trifon) from San Francisco.  Their music is downtempo, glitchy, intimate and beautiful.  It’s a combination of BT-style organic electronica, acoustic guitars and rich female vocals.  I’d say they combine elements of BT with Portishead/Massive Attack, NIN and Amethystium.  Needless to say, this is an amazing combination, haha.  Trifonic’s Emergence is the soundtrack to the sunlight glittering off the icicles outside your window.  The soundtrack to exploring abandoned buildings and contemplative bus rides through a moonlit cityscape.  The soundtrack to a breakup and to almost-forgotten memories.  The internal score to your own scattered thoughts and dreams.

Lies is one of the tracks featuring female vocalist Amelia June.  It’s a sad, downtempo tune with percussion constructed of various noises the brothers recorded around their home one day (the sound of a light bulb turning on, dryer door closing, the fizzing of a pop bottle opening etc).  Amelia’s mournful tones overlay an ethereal and beautiful sonicscape of icy synths, piano and guitar.  Three of the tracks feature female vocals, all excellent.  The others are instrumental and are all just incredible songs.  I’ve included 2 more of my favourites below.  The first is the official video for Parks on Fire.  It was done by the same dude who did the videos for BT’s ‘Antikythera Mechanism” and “1.618″.  It uses a similar style, with clever editing and effects melding the music and video into a symbiotic whole.  This song gets better every time I listen to it.

Parks on Fire from neither-field on Vimeo.

In the “more music” section, I have another song, the title track – Emergence – from the album which is a bit more intense, featuring hints of d&b.  These tracks really remind me of BT’s This Binary Universe, which is wonderful, as I’ve been having trouble finding music to scratch my desire for more music in that vein.  Trifonic definitely does the job and more, bringing something entirely new to music.  I love this album and I think you will too.

- Mons

More music from Trifonic

Trifonic – Emergence

You can download the HD video for Parks on Fire (featured above) for free here.

Further info about today’s MSMOTD

Official Website: http://www.trifonic.com/

Amazingly, Trifonic is offering the entire album as a free download!  There’s also a link from that page to purchase a higher-quality digital version of the album for – get this – any price that you want.  They’ve followed the Radiohead model and are offering their music to people for free, with the hope that people will pay for the album out of appreciation for the music and a desire to support the artist.  The album is worth it, but you can check it all out for free there.

You can also buy the physical album from Amazon if you wish. I get a little kickback if you do this.

This song is from one of my favourite albums, 2006′s “This Binary Universe”.  It is, in my opinion, a towering achievement, both technically and compositionally.  The entire album is unique (you’ve never heard anything quite like it), but also very pleasing, melodic and multi-layered.  This song, named after a 2100 year old Greek Analog Computer (more on this later!), begins as a soft solo piano piece, with other instrumentation joining in (guitars, sweeps, a ukulele) and building to a glitchy, spacey, mulling crescendo.  At this point, the 120-piece Seattle Symphony Orchestra joins in with powerful melodic stabs before being entirely deconstructed and destroyed in a shower of stutters and blips just before the end of the piece.  It’s an ethereal, thoughtful and atmospheric song which inspires me endlessly.

The entire album is incredibly beautiful and it never gets old for me.  It’s one of my single biggest influences as an artist.  The music is a mix of electronic and classical influences with virtuoso compositional flair (this album uses time signatures you’ve never heard of, but they’re used beautifully and seamlessly so you probably wouldn’t even notice). It’s an electronic symphony. Not only is it a musical achievement (the entire album is mixed in 5.1 surround), but it’s a visual one as well.  The album comes with a DVD with videos constructed for each of the 8 songs on the album.  The Antikythera Mechanism and 1.618 (the Golden Ratio) have elaborate artistic videos evoking both the history of the mechanism and the order/math of nature.  They are filled with beautiful imagery that really adds to the music and I highly suggest checking them out.  I’ve included VIMEO links below, since it’s higher quality than youtube (important for these videos) and both songs go over YouTube’s 10-minute limit. I would have embedded them, but for some reason the sound doesn’t work when I do that (?)

BT – The Antikythera Mechanism (video at vimeo)
BT – 1.618 (video at vimeo)
Please, please go watch these videos.

BT also dedicated one of his songs (Good Morning Kaia) as a lullaby to his 2 year old daughter Kaia.  It’s lovely, and it’s accompanied by a very delicate, heartfelt video with footage of him and his daughter (who sat on his lap as he composed it) and a message from him to his daughter.  Anyone who’s a parent should watch this video.

BT is Brian Transeau, an accomplished and world-famous electronica artist.  His previous work was as a trance/house artist and he’s done collaborations and composition for artists from David Bowie and Peter Gabriel to NSync and Britney Spears.  He also did the film score for “Monster” and “Go” amongst others.

Here’s that promised aside about The Antikythera Mechanism.  It’s almost more exciting than the song!  Why?  For two reasons.  First, it (as an orrery, or astronomical calculator) displays a knowledge of planetary motion far exceeding what we had thought existed at the time, or indeed for hundreds of years following.   Secondly, it is an incredibly complex gearwork device, similar in complexity to devices just being developed in 18th century Europe.  The ancient Greeks had this advanced technology and it was lost for thousands of years before being independently redeveloped!  What else has been lost to time?  What would have happened had this not been lost?  One thing is for sure: we’d all have flying cars by now!

I was very excited to see the Antikythera Mechanism in person at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

Further info about today’s MSMOTD

Official Website: http://www.btmusic.com/

Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Binary_Universe

Buy the album/DVD set at Amazon.com. Unfortunately, the album/song don’t appear to be available on Amazon’s excellent MP3 download service. But you should buy the physical CD/DVD set anyways so you can get the full visual/5.1 surround experience.