Brian Wayne Transeau

Brian Wayne Transeau who is known by his fans as BT is a singer, lyricist, composer, and DJ of American origin. He is a multi-instrumentalist, playing various instruments like the piano, guitar, bass, keyboards, synths, sequencers, glockenspiel, drum machines, and modified instruments. BT was born on October 4 in the year 1971 in Rockville, Maryland. His mother was a psychiatrist and his father worked for FBI and DEA. At the age of four, he started listening to classical music and playing classical piano using the Suzuki method. He began studying composition and theory at the Washington Conservatory of Music by the age of eight.

He developed an interest in electronic music through breakdancing culture and Vangelis' score for the Blade Runner film, leading him to discover electronic music artists like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. At 15, he enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied jazz and experimented with running keyboards through old guitar pedals. He moved to Los Angeles in 1989 after dropping out of Berklee. He tried to get signed as a singer-songwriter but failed. He then returned to Maryland in 1990. During his early career, he worked under various musical aliases, including Elastic Chakra, Prana, Elastic Reality, Dharma, Libra, Kaistar, and GTB.

A Moment of Truth and Relativity, two of his early albums, became hits in UK dance clubs where UK DJs like Sasha frequently spun his music for crowds. His 1995 debut album Ima, released on Paul Oakenfold's record label, was a progressive house effort that blended house beats with sweeping New Age sounds, creating the trance sound. He began traveling to England regularly and met Tori Amos Tori Amos is a classically trained American singer >> Read More... during this time. They collaborated on his song Blue Skies, which expanded BT's notability beyond Europe, into North America. He began remixing songs for popular musicians like NSYNC, Diana Ross, Sting, Seal, Madonna, Sarah McLachlan, Britney Spears, and Mike Oldfield.

He used more vocals on his second album, ESCM (an acronym for Electric Sky Church Music), which was launched in 1997. It has more intricate melodies and conventional harmonies. Flaming June, a modern trance song produced by ESCM and German DJ Paul van Dyk, was their greatest success. He later collaborated with Van Dyk on a number of works, including Namistai and van Dyk's remix of BT's Blue Skies and Remember. BT's third album, Movement in Still Life, released in 1999, was his most successful album, featuring a mix of styles like breakbeat, trance, and rock. The album included hits like Godspeed and Mercury and Solace.

BT had the opportunity to compose for Go, a 1999 movie about dance music culture, having long been interested in pursuing a career in cinema composition. He then moved to Los Angeles to further pursue film scoring and began writing music for string quartets. He created the popular song Pop by NSYNC in 2001. In 2003, BT released his most experimental album to date, Emotional Technology, which featured more vocal tracks than his previous works. Somnambulist (Just Being Loved), the album's lead track, primarily borrows from the breakbeats and new wave dance of Depeche Mode and New Order. BT entered into television production for Tommy Lee Goes to College for NBC in 2005. He worked with Sting on his album Sacred Love, co-producing the track Never Coming Home.

In 2006, BT released This Binary Universe, which features ambient music and complex, mathematically-derived arrangements. BT is well-known for his work as a technology and inventor in addition to his work as a musician and composer. He is recognized for developing software for music production and a device for translating musical expression into visual art. These Hopeful Machines, which was BT's sixth studio album, was released on February 2, 2010, and features dance-pop, trance, house, breaks, soundscapes, orchestral interludes, acoustic guitar, and stutter edits. The album features guest appearances and collaborations with various artists and was nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album.

The album contains eight singles released from any BT album and reached number 6 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart. In June 2012, BT released his seventh and eighth studio albums, If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I and Morceau Subrosa. A Song Across Wires, was released on August 16, 2013, which was his ninth album. It had blended elements of trance, progressive house, and electro. The K-pop singer Bada was one of many singers who collaborated on the club music album, which peaked at number five on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums chart. In collaboration with Tommy Tallarico, BT produced Electronic Opus, an album of orchestral versions of his songs, which was crowdfunded through Kickstarter.

He formed the band All Hail the Silence with Christian Burns, and they released their first album Daggers in 2019. He has also composed music for films, including The Fast and the Furious and Catch and Release, and video games, including Need for Speed and FIFA Football. Additionally, BT composed music for the digital artwork piece DUNESCAPE XXI and the auctioned digital artwork piece Genesis.json, which includes 24 hours of original music and 15,000 hand-sequenced audio and visual moments. His album These Hopeful Machines received a Grammy nomination in 2011 for Best Electronic/Dance Album. The following year, his song Must Be the Love was nominated for the IDMA Award for Best Trance Track. In 2013, his track Skylarking was also nominated for the same award and BT himself was nominated for the IDMA Award for Best North American DJ.

In 2014, his album A Song Across Wires was nominated for the Beatport Award for Album of the Year. He has also won two Computer Music magazine awards, including the Innovative Award and the Performance Award. Additionally, BT won a BMI Film Music Award in 2002 for The Fast and the Furious. BT resides in Maryland with his daughter. In February 2014, he collaborated with Electric Family, an EDM lifestyle brand, to create a bracelet where all proceeds were given to the Shark Trust. BT tied the knot with Lacy Transeau on October 19, 2014.