MTF Feature Interview

Few electronic music artists have had a career as diverse as Maryland native Brian Transeau. Journeying well beyond the scope of your average singer/songwriter, BT’s remix and production credits for the likes of Tori Amos, Depeche Mode and Madonna are almost a footnote compared to his pioneering work in sound design and software development, the results of which are spread across nine eclectic albums, from 2010’s Grammy Award-winning These Hopeful Machines to the more recent A Song Across Wires.

BT’s latest leap into the unknown is his Kickstarter project ‘Electronic Opus’. A hugely ambitious venture, it sees the trance pioneer transfigure his songs into orchestral versions to create an electronic symphonic live show, complemented by stunning hyper-synchronised lighting and visual effects. With a first show staged in Miami late last year, there’s more to come, including further outings across Europe and an album release.

MusicTech: Earlier this year, you premiered Electronic Opus at the Winter Music Conference in Miami. Why was this concert so special to you?

BT: I’ve been making music, scoring films and collaborating with artists for the past 20 years of my life and have a huge catalogue of music that I’ve written, most of which I can’t play live and would never have made sense in that format, like the movie scenes I wrote for Fast & Furious and Monster, or music from This Binary Universe. First and foremost, I’m a composer and musician, and I miss playing instruments and performing. Some of these songs are so hard to play, and I was rusty because I’ve been out doing all these EDM gigs for ages. It was a great personal challenge to reimagine these songs as orchestral arrangements, and that’s why I really wanted to do it, because I miss getting to be a musician and performing songs that talk to a crowd.

MT: How difficult was it to apply your back catalogue to a new, semi-orchestral format?

It was an insane process. Typically, when I’m working on a film I’ll orchestrate my own stuff. I studied orchestral writing extensively for years, and if you haven’t had that experience you might think it’s like pulling up a string pad on a synthesiser and plonking some chords on top, but the reality of it is that a middle E on a low viola or high cello is in a completely different timbre. So these songs had to be completely reimagined, including the electronic parts. I worked with six orchestrators; we were flying people in from all over the place and there were Skype calls every day. Once we’d got