I discovered BT at Octopus Records, they had a decent collection of CDs from BT and Chicane. I haven't heard of these artists at the time but I was curious to know what the music sounded like because there was this big collection of this guy's music just sitting there. I started by purchasing IMA, BT's first album. As I listen, I see images of white sand beaches, yerba mate and quality linens, Ibiza, Tiesto, fruit, rattan lounge chairs, luxury fragrances and campfire. A lot of older music is still very relevant to what people are into now, and i think of how we experience it differently now. This is something one of my older relatives would have listened to when they were my age, and i like music helps to connect generations in this way.
BT (Brian Transeau) is an electronic music pioneer known for stretching the limits of electronic music, transitioning through genres and music making methodologies to create new sounds. He is known to have coined and created the "stutter edit" which is a form of sound sampling that involved taking really short clips of sound and repeating them, which helps to add texture to your musical productions. BT has created programs and plugins where producers can do this to their own sounds as well. I took a look on the website where these plugins are available - I got a better feel for what this software can do to a song, and although i will admit the changes are subtle, i can absolutely see how these tools and methodologies have altered electronic music to this day. How beautiful to witness someone that makes electronic music be so interested in technology as a whole, and alter the course of music by creating tools that help future generations of music makers. Tech literacy is different now than it was in the 80's and 90's. The tech back then was simpler, and the machines were bigger, and I envy those who were able to understand tech literacy at the earlier stages of accessible technology and follow it into the modern day. thinking about people building their own simple machines and programs, creating video games, coding their own websites, and embarking on projects in the 70s and 80s when tech was becoming more within reach. At the time BT's first album IMA was released (1995), humanity is approaching a new millenium, where there are so many discoveries and possibilities for humanity to expand as technology grows greater. The technology of the 80's became more accessible to the general public in the 90s, and the newness of it all must have really been exciting and enabled music maker to use technology to shape the sounds of our future.
