jeremus:

BT (Brian Transeau) Explains the method behind his madness when crafting these modern day works of musical altruism, which have shaped my very perception of how good music should sound.


BT: Album: Emotional Technology

“Circles”

“Circles” is a song I wrote singing into my crappy tape deck that I’ve had for 15 years and playing guitar. It’s a very personal piece of music. This whole record is very personal, but it’s a particularly personal piece of music. I sat down, wrote out some lyrics, and the beats for that song started with [Native Instruments] Battery. And then one of the main synth lines was actually [Native Instruments] Pro-52, which is one of the Logic plug-ins. So I roughed together a skeletal arrangement of it. And that’s one of the tracks I went into the studio and cut with Richard Fortus, Tommy Stinson and Brain [of Guns N’ Roses]. I played guitar and sang live in the studio. We rehearsed it once; we cut it once. That track took about three weeks to time-correct—tons of live instruments: drums, bass, guitar. And then Richard did some absolutely amazing treated-guitar stuff after the fact, after I comped my vocal, time-corrected the track and added some really cool keyboard parts and cool effects to the vocals—Rasco did some rapping on the track—through my new Line 6 amp. But Richard did some really cool, he calls them, “pterodactyl screams,” which are these mental, Ziggy Stardust, atonal guitar riffs. They’re really hypertreated with a lot of pedals. Richard is the only other musician … he’s a consummate musician’s musician. I love that guy. He’s the only other person I know who knows harmonically what’s happening in a piece of music. He’s always being made fun of in Guns N’ Roses; he has his laptop on top of his rig, all this tech-metal shit. So he did some fantastic sound design, a couple of different treatments using these pterodactyl screams. And I cut them into a repetitive line. The midsection of that song is really cool. It’s three bars of 3/4 followed by a bar of 4/4. It feels like two bars of three and one bar of seven. It’s got this really cool turnaround pattern. He did this long pterodactyl treatment cut together in a line. It’s very hooky. It’s one of my favorite things in that song.

(Lyrics)

i’m on my knees
and shes on her last defense
though the tempest may breathe
we know we’re on our last pretense

our love is cyclical
it moves in circles
shifting and convolving
goes round again
it shelters like nightfall
sinks us in circles

pray the dark of night sees the sun
again…

if i believe,
tell me we’ll eventually matter
if i believe,
tell me we’ll eventually matter
again

so here comes the rain 
it falls on my face again
though i’m tempted to start
after considering i stop again

we break the dark seal 
unhide whats been hidden
reacting to the unreal 
trust me i know how it feels, yeah…

our love is cyclical
it moves in circles
shifting and convolving
goes around again

it shelters like nightfall
sinks us in circles
pray the dark of night
sees the sun again…

if i believe,
tell me we’ll eventually matter
if i believe, 
tell me we’ll eventually matter,
again

our love is cyclical
it moves in circles
shifting and convolving
goes round again

it shelters like nightfall
sinks us in circles
pray the dark of night 
sees the sun again…

if i believe, 
tell me we’ll eventually matter
if i believe, 
tell me we’ll eventually matter,
again


“Animals”

It is just a very universal and really powerful lyric. It’s a very simple metaphor talking about humans as conscious animals and that kind of distinction of us, as humans, our consciousness. It’s one of the songs that I’m really proud of because it would stand on its own with just guitar and singing. That’s probably one of the songs I will close my set with when I go on tour. It’s another one of those songs recorded with Brain, Tommy and Richard. But I did a rough of it with acoustic guitar, vocals and beats. And there’s a beat that ended up staying for the verses that I did in [Koblo] Stella9000. It’s the company that makes Vibra 9000. It’s these really creepy Autechre-y–sounding beats. And then I time-corrected them and put them in [Symbolic Sound] Kyma and did this weird spectral blurring treatment to them. They’re one of my favorite sound-designing things on the album. The beats on “Animals” during the verses are really cool.
There’s a vocal that I sang at least 50 times because there are a good 20 different background parts in different sections. And Mike [DiMattia] did a vocal comp to that, and it killed him. He’s still recovering from it. But he’s the master of vocal comping … “Animals” was like his doctoral thesis. He was like, “Dude, what do I do with this ahh sound, and how do I make it go can?” So he’s a whiz at vocal comping now after that song. Again, it was one of those ones that took three weeks to a month just to time-correct the live performance. Then, we mixed it. One of the coolest things about that is that it features the sounds of these guys diving in underwater submersibles. I just thought it was really cool, the [sample] I found online. I’m big into scuba diving. It’s one of these hobbies. And I found this thing online of guys, they can go to something like 9- or 10,000 feet below sea level, and I found this Website where they were diving in these incredibly super-reinforced diving bells. And they were talking about all these creatures at that depth. It was just a really beautiful eerie sound of bubbles. And you could hear the beeping of sonar. I used some of that along with some pads and textural stuff in the beginning of the song. It’s a really beautiful way to start the song.

(Lyrics)

my secret wish 
in this sacred place
is to relinquish needs
the great constant 
is perpetual change

so when we leave 
as we know we will,
some of us remains,
consencrated and unchanged

circles in stars
they bind us now,
we’re pretty animals

colors around
are bled of love,
we’re hopefully animals
kiss me now
so we can feel alive
we’re concious animals
circles in stars
they bind us now,
we’re sacred animals

from blood we came,
to ash we return again
these carbon hearts,
and terrestrial hopes

from our first goodbye
to the last hello,
pray we carve our paths
from god’s sacrosanct… yeah

circles in stars
they bind us now,
we’re pretty animals
colors around are bled of love,
we’re hopeful animals
kiss me now so we can feel alive,
we’re concious animals

circles in stars
they bind us now…
we’re sacred animals

the love we crave,
that binds, bends
but can never change
feeds the faith in faith
that i search for in everything…

(bridge 2 + chorus repeat)



“The Only Constant Is Change”

This is a song that I wrote on my acoustic baritone guitar. And when I wrote that song, I recorded it almost immediately. The baritone guitar has an electric output on it. And I ran a cable out of the baritone into my [Vox] AC30. I put it down a long hallway in my house. But I close-miked my acoustic guitar, and way, way off in the background, you hear this fucked up distorted-out, reverbed-out version of it, but it’s so soft and so emotional. It’s very powerful and cathartic-sounding. That song starts with the crickets of Maryland and this baritone acoustic guitar. And it’s a very simple vocal. It features some harmonic stuff in the song. There’s an especially interesting bridge that’s got some cool oboe interchange in the middle of it. And it’s in 7/4. But it’s just a very simple song about loss. And I think it’s a great way to close the album. Brain played drums on that song, Richard played one or two guitar parts, and I played bass and guitar. It’s a very sad song.

(Lyrics)

First, we are
explicably where we are
Chaste and burned
we’re comfortably lovless

In a trillion years,
the stars will no longer shine
But we’ll remain, get it right
or come back again…my love

Make it clear
integrate this love and fear
Still hopelessly hopeful
wounded child seeking wonderful

As closed as I am,
born a craftsman of shifting sands
What lies I learned,
lessened my ability to be present

My love,
will never change
Though we’ve ruined everything
The stars still conspire for us
Until our final breaths…

We need more love in the world
We need more hope in the world
Build more joy in the world
we crave more love…

My love,
will never change
Though we’ve ruined everything
The stars still conspire for us
Until our final breaths…
(repeat up to)
the stars… They only constant is c h a n g e