BT

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, and for "stretching electronic music to its technical breaking point." In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album for These Hopeful Machines. 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. 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. 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). 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. 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. and started playing classical piano at an early age, utilizing the Suzuki method. By the age of eight he was studying composition and theory at the Washington Conservatory of Music. 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. In high school, he played drums in one band, bass in a ska band and guitar in a punk group.

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. 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. 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.

BT's 1995 debut album Ima, released on Oakenfold's label, was a progressive house effort. "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.

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. 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." The album features a strong element of nu skool breaks, a genre he helped define with "Hip-Hop Phenomenon" 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). "Never Gonna Come Back Down" reached number 9 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and number 16 on Billboards Alternative Songs chart, and the album reached number 166 on the Billboard 200 album charts.

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. and it reached number 138 on the Billboard 200 charts. The biggest single from the album, "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)", draws heavily from the breakbeats and new wave dance of New Order and Depeche Mode, whom BT has cited as major influences. It reached number 5 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart and number 98 on the Billboard Hot 100.

BT ventured into television production for Tommy Lee Goes to College for NBC in 2005. It starred Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. He executive-produced the reality television series, the idea for which he developed and sold to NBC.

2006–2009: This Binary Universe

BT's fifth studio album, This Binary Universe, released on August 29, 2006, is his second album released in 5.1 surround sound, the first being the soundtrack to the 2003 film Monster.

The double album highlights a mix of genres, including jazz, breakbeats and classical. Three songs feature a full 110-piece orchestra. Unlike his previous two albums, which featured vocals on almost every track, this album is entirely instrumental. The tracks change genres constantly. For example, "The Antikythera Mechanism" starts off almost lullaby-like, complete with a piano, acoustic guitars and reversed beats; halfway through the track, it explodes with a 110-piece orchestra, followed by a section of breakbeats and ending with the de-construction of the orchestra. Animated videos created by visual effects artist Scott Pagano to accompany each song were included in a DVD packaged along with the CD. BT's company, Sonik Architects, built the drum machine (the first in surround sound) used on the album. Wired called it an "innovative masterpiece."

In November and December 2006, BT toured the album with Thomas Dolby opening. All the shows were done in 5.1 surround sound, with BT playing piano, bass and other instruments live, and also singing on a cover of "Mad World" by Tears for Fears. Earlier in 2006, BT performed with an orchestra and conductor and visuals for an audience of 11,000 at the Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. and number 154 on the Billboard 200 album charts. The singles "Emergency" and "Rose of Jericho" reached numbers 3 and 5 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, respectively.

A remix album, titled These Re-Imagined Machines was released in 2011. These Humble Machines, an un-mixed album featuring shorter "radio edit" versions of the tracks (similar to the American version of Movement in Still Life) was also released in 2011.

2012: If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I and Morceau Subrosa On June 19, 2012, BT released If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I, along with Morceau Subrosa, his seventh and eighth studio albums. If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I was an about-face from BT's previous album These Hopeful Machines, utilizing minimal beats, ambient soundscapes, and glitch music, as opposed to the electronic music style of These Hopeful Machines. Morceau Subrosa is very different in style compared to most of BT's previous works, favoring ambient soundscapes and minimal beats.

2013–2014: A Song Across Wires and radio shows BT's ninth studio album, A Song Across Wires, was released worldwide on August 16, 2013. and features four Beatport No. 1 trance singles: "Tomahawk" (with Adam K), "Must Be the Love" (with Arty and Nadia Ali), "Skylarking" and "Surrounded" (with Au5 and Aqualung).

In 2012, he released the mix collection Laptop Symphony, based on his laptop performances on his SiriusXM radio show, which range from dubstep to drumstep to progressive to trance. In 2013, he started a new Sirius XM radio program, Skylarking, on the Electric Area channel.

2015–2019: Electronic Opus, All Hail the Silence, _ and ‡

On November 10, 2014, BT announced a Kickstarter project with Tommy Tallarico to produce Electronic Opus, an electronic symphonic album with re-imagined, orchestral versions of BT's songs. The project reached its crowd-funding goal of $200,000. A live orchestra played during Video Games Live on March 29, 2015, while the album was released on October 12, 2015.

On March 7, 2012, it was announced that BT and Christian Burns had formed a band called All Hail the Silence, with encouragement from Vince Clarke. They released their first unofficial single, "Looking Glass", online in 2012. On July 21, 2014, Transeau and Burns announced that their band would be touring with Erasure in the fall of 2014 for the album The Violet Flame. On August 24, 2016, the band announced that they would release a limited edition colored 12" vinyl collectible extended play entitled AHTS-001 with Shopify on September 19, 2016. On September 28, 2018, the band released their first official single, "Diamonds in the Snow", along with its accompanying music video. They released the music video for "Temptation" in December 2018. The band's first album, Daggers (stylized as ‡), was released on January 18, 2019.

On December 14, 2015, BT disclosed news to DJ Mag about a new album to come by early 2016. Similar to This Binary Universe, BT explained that "the entire record is recorded in a way [I've] never recorded anything before," and that it has a "modular, ambient aesthetic". The album, _, was released digitally on October 14, 2016, and physically on December 2, 2016, via Black Hole Recordings, along with an accompanying film. Due to the restrictions of most music sites, which forbid blank album titles, BT chose to name the album the underscore character "_". BT has admitted that this title has resulted in complaints from fans about difficulties in finding the album on popular services due to the inability of most search engines to handle the "_" character. On January 17, 2017, BT released _+, an extended version of _.

On October 10, 2019, BT announced on Instagram that two new albums were slated for release in the Fall of 2019: Between Here and You, an ambient album consisting of ten tracks, and Everything You're Searching for Is on the Other Side of Fear, a 17-track album with sounds akin to those from This Binary Universe and _. Between Here and You was released on October 18, 2019 and reached the number 1 spot on the Electronic Albums Chart on iTunes. Everything You're Searching for Is on the Other Side of Fear was released on December 13, 2019.

2020–present: The Lost Art of Longing, Genesis.json, Metaversal and The Secret Language of Trees On June 19, 2020, BT released the single "1AM in Paris / The War", which featured singer Iraina Mancini and DJ Matt Fax. On July 17, 2020, another single, "No Warning Lights" was released, featuring Emma Hewitt on vocals. It was later announced that The Lost Art of Longing would be his thirteenth album, released on August 14, 2020.

In May 2021, Transeau entered into the world of NFTs by composing music for a digital artwork piece entitled "DUNESCAPE XXI", and soon afterwards auctioning off a digital artwork piece entitled "Genesis.json", which includes 24 hours worth of original music that contains a raga and 15,000 hand-sequenced audio and visual moments. The artwork is programmed to give a special message on the owner's birthday and is the "only work of art that puts itself to sleep" on a certain time. In September 2021, BT announced his 14th album Metaversal, which was created and programmed entirely on a blockchain for release on September 29. The album was released publicly on November 19.

On June 6, 2023, Transeau released a single, "k-means clustering", and announced his 15th album, The Secret Language of Trees, which was released on July 11 on Monstercat.

In March 2025, Transeau and frequent collaborator Christian Burns formed a sub-label for Black Hole Recordings, KSS3TE Recordings.

In March 2025, BT was awarded the Legend of Dance – Level Award from Nexus Radio during an interview with the internet station in Miami. He also co-hosted the 41st TEC Awards in January 2026.

Film, TV and video game scores BT began scoring films in 1999 with Go. Since then he has scored over a dozen films, including The Fast and the Furious, Monster, Gone in 60 Seconds, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Catch and Release. In 2009, Sonik Architects released Sonifi, a product for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that enables musicians to replicate BT's stutter edit effect live. BT himself has used it during live shows. and at the Winter NAMM Show in January 2011, the Stutter Edit plug-in, based on BT's patented technique of real-time manipulation of digital audio, was released by iZotope and BT.

In 2020, Transeau released an upgraded version of his Stutter Edit plug-in with iZotope, called Stutter Edit 2. This version includes more sound effects, more presets, and new features such as Auto Mode and the Curve editor.

SoundLabs In 2024, Transeau co-founded SoundLabs, which allows for music corporations to use their artificial intelligence-assistive tools to create music and vocals for artists while letting artists retain the rights of such generated material. The company has entered an agreement with Universal Music Group to create vocals using SoundLabs' plugin MicDrop. A Spanish version of country music star Brenda Lee's 1958 song "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" using MicDrop was generated by SoundLabs.

Other software Transeau is a user of the digital audio workstation FL Studio and he was included in the Power Users section on Image-Line's site in 2013. In 2014, BT collaborated with Boulanger Labs in creating the Leap Motion app Muse, a device that allows users to compose their own ambient sounds using gestural control. BT created presets for the synth plugin Parallels, released by Softube in 2019. He also created analog synth tone patches for the synthesized Omnisphere 2, created by ILIO.

In 2022, BT released the reverb Tails with Unfiltered Audio and the synth plugin Polaris with Spitfire. In 2024, he released the drum layering plugin Snapback with Cableguys.

Personal life

He is an avid scuba diver, and supports the preservation of sharks. In February 2014, BT partnered with EDM lifestyle brand Electric Family to produce a collaboration bracelet for which 100% of the proceeds are donated to the Shark Trust. On October 19, 2014, BT was married to Lacy Transeau (née Bean). He has a daughter from a previous relationship.

Awards and nominations Grammy Awards Year Nominated work Category Result 2011 These Hopeful Machines Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album

"Skylarking" IDMA Award for Best Trance Track BT IDMA Award for Best North American DJ Metaversal (2021) The Secret Language of Trees (2023)With All Hail the Silence''' Daggers'' (2019)