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Summary
Musician BT combines music and technology in a celebration of the world's beautiful places.

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In today's day and age, few musicians are blessed with a continued sense of experimentalism. Brian Transeau (popularly known as BT) has continually reinvented himself since his artistic debut 'Ima' in 1995. Transitioning through progressive house (Ima), ghettoblaster hip hop and tribal downtempo (ESCM), trance and nu-skool breakbeat (Movement In Still Life) and even a foray into alternative rock (Emotional Technology), BT once again steps out with complete conviction in a new sound and a new boundary to be crossed.

'This Binary Universe' covers a wide range of articulated influences: The romantic classicism of Frederic Chopin and mathematics-inspired Claude Debussy; to 20th century modernists Krzsztof Penderecki and Igor Stravinsky. And yet, there's a clear nod to the spatial minimalists Sigur Rós and glitch-era circuit-benders Telefon Tel Aviv. Through all this, BT has done the inexplicable: Combined the core inspiration of these wildly diverse and contrarian musical approaches to form a cohesive sound.

There are a myriad of concepts, notations and production methods here, all of them worth exploring to the fullest. The entire album was composed natively in 5.1 digital surround, and rewards the listener accordingly (the included 2.1 stereo mixdown is disappointingly muddy by comparison). Visual accompaniment is also included by a series of art directors, which offers a varying perspective on the musical interpretation.

The peaceable introduction 'All That Makes Us Human Continues', is misleadingly organic -- the track was reportedly composed entirely in audio programming language C-Sound without a note of physical music in a six month undertaking. Gentle harmonics waft through the sound field and build into a glitchy, bleepy transition that passes off to virtual acoustic textures and a plodding downbeat. The stage is set here -- primary melodies are evenly distributed up front, drums work evenly around all five speakers and many crucial counterpoint harmonics are relegated to the center channel.

Continuing in classical romance tradition, a solo piano piece leads album opus 'The Antikythera Mechanism', named so for the Greek analog computer. Reverse sweeps position the track for a change and more harmonies and bells, swirling lightly in circles around you. A pair of guitars and a ukelele complete the introductory ensemble, and panned drums bounce back and forth between the right and center channels. A teaser break drops down into a numbing flurry of glitchy drums, reversed guitars and a wickedly walking bass line, re-emerging hand in hand with the piano melodies just in time for Seattle Symphony Orchestra to strike again in an epic, extraordinarily thematic fashion. Space zaps yank the track back down into another breakbeat cutout with blips, squelches and a hailstorm of stutters. The orchestra comes back in for the finale, which - in a shocking and surprisingly gutsy destruction of all 110 pieces - never happens.

'This Binary Universe' is a rousing success in sound design and synthesis, but occasionally falls short in intensity and delivery. Much patience is required for in-depth listens, and the payoffs aren't consistently delivered at times. But regardless, the album concludes in fine form and with the available styles at it's disposal, executes nicely. There's a projection of frustration in the expectation of simplicity, and in a way it rebels strongly against it. BT found a way to make music beautiful while breaking every rule of tradition in the book.