It’s been a while since I’ve said anything new here. But when you travel and work as much as I do, it’s not often you get a chance for a real brain dump. Likewise, the things you do and the hobbies you take up typically have to transcend your physical locations. The last guy who tried to play on a summer baseball team in Seattle while driving through Indiana didn’t manage very well.

And so, I’ve picked up reviewing music. Not the trash fodder found on the radio, or even topping the iTunes download charts. The niche field of electronic music.

A buddy of mine and I tend to frequently come at odds here. He comes from progressive rock roots, well-polished commercial music and the occasional guilty pleasure of hair band 80s. If it can’t be played on a guitar in three chords, he’s probably not interested. And the production methods of the music I listen to drives him completely to drink.

Our discussion came to a head tonight while he listened in on the latest album I picked up for review: An advance copy of BT’s This Binary Universe. What’s happened here is likely one of the most pivotal moments in 21st century composition… and like Mozart driving himself to madness, Beethoven becoming deaf to cheers and Chopin before his premature bout of tuberculosis, genius is most definitely being misunderstood in it’s own time.

Sure, it’s a stretch. Some of the most revolutionary harmonic progressions and counterpoint techniques that make Berklee School of Music kids gasp in amazement are punctuated by harsh synthetic tones, samples seemingly yanked off the street and instruments that didn’t actually exist before BT sat down and created them.

“I don’t dispute the mathematical precision in this,” my friend said ironically during a song called 1.618. “I admire his ability to make toasters, car horns and crying babies sound good together, but that elicits no emotional feeling from me.” This earned a jaw-dropping stare on my behalf, and a half hour debate ensued.

Peoples’ personal preference in music aside, we tend to gravitate towards melody driven sounds. For whatever reason — whether it’s social conditioning, physiological appeasement or just plain primative instincts — we prefer linear progressions in warm, pleasant sounds usually provided by some form of people hacking away at a set of tuned strings (stop and think what a piano really is for a second). But if you take all the music produced in the last 100 years and throw it into a geometric mapper, you’ll find the number of calculations to perform said music is actually quite low, since popular music has recycled over itself time and time again. The formula for creating a hit that sells Rascal Flatts albums or singles from The Killers is fairly simplistic in nature — all these people are doing is working with a basic set of concepts and variables that are proven easy to digest and market to the masses who’ve had decades of prior exposure.

What this album does is seek to expand the boundaries of acceptance with new calculations and discoveries. There’s a projection of frustration in the expectation of simplicity… and in a way it rebels strongly against it. Brian found a way to make music beautiful while breaking every rule of tradition in the book.

This was my initial attraction to synthetic and unique forms of musicianship, quite unintentionally. My favorite song growing up was King of Pain by The Police, a song with little melody but strong, harmonic undertones. A dozen years later at the height of my immersion in electronic music, BT crossed paths with Sting to collaborate on a project together. On their individual merits both men are certified mad professors. Sting spent half his career explaining to everyone why his wife will never understand him while Brian reads supermarket labels in binary. It’s no coincidence these men met. Likewise, it’s no coincidence that I’ve once again found comfort and peace in a masterpiece of mathematical precision that, to the average person, sounds like nothing of a kind.

Music brings out a kind of self reflection of who you are, what you seek to find and what inspires you to be. A resentful, pained soul without grounding will trend towards angst, not celebration. A delightfully happy person with no cares in the world will be appreciative of what they are given — a blessing for the freedom it affords and a curse for the lack of discernment. Music is a tool of many forms. It can be uplifting and inspiring, emotionally wrought, depressing and bleak, aggressive and maniacal or frantic for answers. If the relationship between mathematics and musical phenomena were ever fully understood, we’d discover far more about ourselves and others than anticipated.

That all being said, the sound of mathematical and harmonic precision never sounded better.