A good two decades in the electronic music scene, big-hair-big-sound supermusician Brian Transeau (known as BT) has produced, remixed, and shared the stage with a thousand big names. A Song Across Wires, his 9th studio album, is packed with collaborations with artists young and old. We see BT tackling some of the most popular genres of the moment, almost as an afterthought considering the context of his whole career. And in doing so, he’s enlisted the help of some great talent to add flavor to his sound – Arty, Tritonal, Fractal, and Nadia Ali to name a few. Armada Music’s one of the biggest labels for this sound, and ASAW is set to be one of the biggest albums of their year. There are a lot of solid tracks and the production value is top notch. But it doesn’t really sound quite as inspired as other BT releases. It’s his first album with the intent of being club-oriented, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s a record full of singles. But it just feels hasty. Even though there is great music around the disc, bits of this album are still boring.
The first few songs are a really nice start to the album – rivaling the beginning of Emotional Technology, his 2003 release that had a definitively intentional “2000-era-pop” aura about it. And Transeau knew that time very well, having seen success producing memorable singles for NSYNC, Britney Spears, David Bowie, and others (“Pop”, yeah? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWZKw_MgUPI). But akin to that album, after a while the songs become indistinguishably average on some level. The three best tracks on ASAW are the first three.
Track 1, Skylarking is an instant reminder that Transeau’s command of trance music is still as strong as ever, if we are to consider it his “first” genre. It has the right feel for an opener of any excellent mix. Actually, I think it’s already found its way in some manner into four episodes of Armin van Buuren’s weekly series A State of Trance. Letting Go follows next, a collab between himself and Fractal – a newer face from the booming Monstercat Records – as well as the voice of the always relevant JES, a classic name in the world of confidently airy female voices that appear on Tiesto/Allure/Deepsky/etc tracks. It’s a similar sound to Seven Lions (who I’d say is one of the best minds in EDM at the moment – check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIo14jKF9uI), in its well-balanced shifts between various yoys, pews and wobbly bits . It’s heavy, anthemic, and also well controlled. If there’s any one thing to know about BT’s style, it’s that he knows proportion. All music that he’s ever written, regardless of instrumentation, will always be well-set in its structure and balance. There’s never any of that “drop is always 55 seconds in because 16 bars at 140 bpm is all the amount of time it takes to build to a climactic event” silliness. Transeau knows how to manage energy. Likewise, Tomahawk comes third – a sort of split between both styles. It builds as a melodic trance tune, but lands like a complextro jam. This one was also a collab, with Adam K – who will forever be lost in the infinitely large volume of first-name-last-initial producers (see Adam F, Andy C, John B, whatever).
There are a lot of other great names on ASAW, from older folks like Aqualung and Christian Burns (who was in the notes for These Hopeful Machines, another BT album) to new dudes like tyDi and the prodigal Arty, who’s I guess is old enough by now to not be known as “the kid.” Regardless, the rest of the album is a little downhill from the first three. The sound is a little derivative, but it’s the BT take on what’s biggest in the electronic music game at the moment – which I want to believe is inherently innovative. Sometimes, it might be. At worst, ASAW is kinda stale. At mediumest, it’s standard. And at best, it can be pretty great. Unlike a lot of other music in this type of sound, the tracks aren’t written solely around drops or climactic sections – only moving in the direction of “building to the drop” or “deconstructing from the drop so that it may build immediately after.” The songs here move well and go in a lot of different directions in regard to intensity and energy, without constraining themselves to that dichotomy. That’s not to say the music doesn’t have climaxes. It does, but it’s more like trance than dubstep – lengthier and favoring pretty melodies.
I’d probably be a whole lot less critical if it weren’t for this silly track 10, Vervoeren. So here’s the scoop: BT practically invented the whole style of stutter edits and microcuts in dance music. After all, “Somnambulist” of Emotional Technology held (or holds?) the Guinness World Record for “most vocal edits in a single track” – flying in at an absurd 6178. That being said, it doesn’t sound overkill. Vervoeren, on the other hand, has sections where it sounds so novice that it’s bothersome. He often does well with glitch music, capstoned by his masterful and perfect 2006 release This Binary Universe. It’s my favorite album of all time (tied with The Go! Team’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike if you care to know) so I’m probably a little biased – but it’s 100% worth checking out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDGwlEJTjc4). Transeau has a great range. I suppose ASAW does well to insulate that, even though it’s not “pushing the envelope” in any sense of an overused adage. The tracks will get mixed up and down across sets. But there shouldn’t necessarily be to high of expectations that he’s due for another Grammy nomination (just like his 2010 release These Hopeful Machines).
There was this interview I remember that The Glitch Mob did a few years ago when they likened each of their four members (and this was back when Kraddy was on the team) to different qualities in their music. That is, the Booty, Beauty, Crunk, and Tweak. I think all electronic music genres can be tossed onto a loose venn diagram of these four qualities. Drum&Bass (think Netsky) – predominantly booty and beauty, glitch hop (think edIT) – mostly booty and crunk or tweak, progressive house (think Deadmau5) – generally about beauty. BT’s signature sound has always been about managing a great balance between a consistent booty, memorable beauty, and his signature tweak. After all, he is behind some of the prolifically important products of the audio effects company iZotope. I’d say A Song Across Wires has a nice balance of booty, beauty, and tweak.
2013 will be remembered as a big year for veteran artists of electronic music. The list is pretty unreal – new music from Daft Punk, Boards of Canada, Moby, Jon Hopkins (check this dude out, f’real), Bonobo, and Autechre. BT’s new one isn’t really worth forgetting entirely, but it’s not necessarily worth remembering over all of those, either. He’s a classically trained musician, with a great awareness of detail. But A Song Across Wires will just remain a relatively small detail of his discography. Now we know that he is capable of challenging the current heavyweights of EDM, but I don’t want or expect him to stay here. He’s late to the game this time, which might be why I’m so tempted to be disappointed. But I suppose that if it were released a few years ago, it would’ve been a lot more monumental. I’m still a little indecisive with regard to a verdict. But I’ll mark it at a 6 or 7ish outta 10.