Musical Bliss

A few weeks ago, my friend Stuart gave me a call to let me know that BT has a new album. This Binary Universe is not only a full-length album, but also a movie consisting of an animated music video for each song. BT screened the movie/videos at different theatres around the country - including the Bethesda Row Cinema. Stuart bought a group of tickets and invited me to go!!

Stuart, John Whall, Nick Hunter and I caught dinner at The Austin Grill. After we walked around downtown Bethesda to kill time before the 9:30p showing. The 7:30p showing went late, so we didn't get to take our seats until 10:15ish. We were very near the front of the line, so we got seats in the middle of the theatre about 3/4 the way back.

After everyone was seated, BT walked in, to great applause, and introduced This Binary Universe. He explained that three things influenced the album: first, the sound track to the movie Monster he had recently completed; second, jazz; and third, classical music. He told us that the first piece was written entirely in code (ASCII characters in a text editor) using a programming language called CSound. He then took his seat in the audience (TWO ROWS IN FRONT OF ME) and the movie began.

It was incredible. Every song was composed with full 5.1 surround sound. Sound was coming from every direction. Each piece was just as amazing as the last. My favorites were The Internal Locus, 1.618, and The Antikythera Mechanism. I was completely mesmerized. A few times during the screening I had the thought run through my mind, which I only have when listening to BT, "this is perfect music." Both visually and musically I was blown away.

Afterwards BT took questions from the audience. Someone asked if fractals were used in 1.618, then asked if there were any fractals in the music. BT responded that this was the best question he had received during a post-screening QA. There were, indeed, fractals used during the piece. And there are also fractals in the music. At one point he compressed the entire song (or movement, can't remember), then compressed it again, and again, and again, all in a four bar sequence. It was absolutely amazing. He explained that there are many other items hidden in the music that one can only discover by studying the audio files.

As Stuart put it, as he dropped me off at my house at one a.m., "That was one of the most amazing hours of my life."