This Binary Universe is the fifth album released by electronic music producer/film score composer BT (Brian Transeau), and demonstrates a marked departure from his early trance roots.
Released August 29, 2006, the album was originally conceived as a collection of lullabies intended for Brian's then infant daughter, Kaia. As such, all of the songs are rooted primarily in the ambient genre. Each song clocks in at or over 10 minutes, slowly constructing soundscapes as the track progresses.
During the production of the album, BT found himself frustrated at his equipment's inability to produce the sounds he desired. So, armed with a variety of field recording devices, children's toys, and soldering guns, he engineered unique sounds specifically tailored to each track. This ingenuity extended itself even further, with one track, "All that Makes us Human Continues" being programmed entirely in CSound, a music sequencer written in the C programming language.
BT also made use of more conventional methods when producing the album. A 110 piece orchestra was hired to play in "The Antikythera Mechanism"; the orchestra is allowed to play normally at the midpoint of the song, before being bitcrushed, stuttered, and warped into an unrecognizable mess at the end.
The songs themselves are a mish-mash of several genres, including downtempo, glitch, classical, hip-hop, ambient, and minimal, with most songs veering between each several times per track.
Those that bought the box set received both the album, mixed in total 5.1 DTS surround sound along with a DVD containing a series of animated videos to accompany each track on the album.
The final song on the album, "Good Morning Kaia", is set to a collage of home videos of Kaia playing with her father and mother and vacationing with their family. Over this plays a note from Brian to her, thanking her for choosing him as her father and reminding her that she'll always be the light of his life. It brought a tear to this noder's eye, and, in my opinion, really drives home what this album is all about.