BT: These Hopeful Machines

Brian Transeau, or “BT” as he’s billed, makes music. Lots of it. Not in a Ryan Adams-I’m-going-to-release-three-albums-in-one-year-way, but in a way that genuflects to nearly all varieties of music within a single career, if not within a single song. BT’s sonic prowess is no doubt encoded in computer language, but he utilizes this lexicon as a canvas to meld every invented genre into one: “music”. His latest release, These Hopeful Machines (Nettwerk Records) could not better exemplify of how BT imagines music as a vast, contiguous landscape.

While certainly drenched in electronic confetti throughout, These Hopeful Machines, unlike some of his previous work, understands that people don’t go to parties for the confectionary, but for the experience the confectionary augments. Hence, restraint is of the essence. Organic voices, guitars, strings, and drum kits alike weave between a digital interface so elegantly, it’s easy to embrace the intentional glitch tracks, stutter edits, and dare I say, “techno” beats, that accompany nearly every minute of this two-hour opus. One gets the sense while listening that the analog age is reluctantly signing a lease over to a new stranger, but a stranger that is kind enough to indulge in a conversation before unpacking.

Musically (and I mean things like melody and song structure), These Hopeful Machines is arguably simple. This isn’t to say it’s banal. Simplicity is the formula by which the complexity of genius can breathe. I would invoke examples of this argument in Nirvana’s Nevermind or some of the early Beatles albums. These Hopeful Machines is of the same formula. Many of the songs on this album were likely conceived on nothing more than a lonely guitar in a lonely room. What provides the complexity of genius is the added texture to the melodies, harmonies, and hooks. And BT layers texture like no one can - and i literally mean no one since he builds many of his machines and computer programs.

These Hopeful Machines is packaged as a two-part continuous listen, with “A Side” and “B Side” sold as two independent downloads, each having six disparate “movements”. Therefore, discussing specific songs is a bit of a disservice, but still relevant. The album opener, “Suddenly” idles for only 22 seconds before the 21st Century introduces itself. Loudly. But as if responding to a question from this bold stranger, BT’s human voice responds on behalf of the previous millennium with “You and your emotion/I’m on your side/I say your prayer”. A cordial conversation between these new friends ensues for the remaining hour and fifty-one minutes. The final word in this conversation is a necessary, albeit poignant goodbye from our analog past with a gorgeous, tape-recorded (seriously) cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost In You”. I have no doubt that this ghost will soon become the haunt of on old friend from times past.

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