If you’ve pinned Brian Transeau as a progressive trance loyalist, you might want to take a look at his Laptop Symphony Radio show. Alongside artists like Pryda, Above & Beyond and Avicii, BT is also enamoured by what he calls the “convergence of electro, dubstep and IDM”. He’s just as likely to work Feed Me, Skrillex, Calvetron and even SBTRKT into the mix, and the same ‘anything goes’ approach carries over into his live performances. As he tells inthemix, “Honestly it bores me playing for a crowd that wants to hear the same thing all night long.”

As a producer, BT doesn’t align with any defined camp. On one side, he’s a studio ally for the likes of Tiesto and Armin van Buuren, making big tunes for loved-up dancefloors. Meanwhile his albums – the most recent being 2010’s These Hopeful Machines – tend to find the producer in a more reflective and expansive mood. With a back-catologue that begins in the early ‘90s, there have been many incarnations of BT.

When he arrives here for Stereosonic, though, we can expect to let loose. BT seems genuinely hyped to do his thing again in Australia, so inthemix picked his brain about the new dance music movement and why it pays to be truthful.

Back in July, you wrote on Facebook, “I’ve not felt this inspired for years.” What have been the sources of that inspiration?
Honestly over the last three or four years there’s been the most inspiring and inspired music being made. From M83 to Lazy Rich, Porter Robinson, Datsik, Feed Me, Skrillex, there’s just so much music going on that’s unrelated to the music before it. It’s very disruptive. In technology, we’d call it a ‘disruptive technology’.

You know, there’s been this moment of singularity that occurred, this convergence of electro, dubstep and IDM. It’s made something very new that has obsoleted a lot that has come before it. In evolutionary terms, it’s the sort of mutation that creates the adaptive nature of a species that is needed to survive.

Do you find dancefloors are really responding to a wide spectrum of sounds now?
Absolutely. And you know, that’s part of this incredible thing that’s happening. There’s been this explosion of this new music. It’s divided along age lines. I’ve noticed that your 30, 35 year olds want to get a babysitter and go to a club with bottle service and the girlfriend wants to put on pretty shoes. They want to listen to trance all night.

Then your 18 to 25s, they want you to rip their fucking faces off. They don’t care how you do it. They don’t care if it’s 108-BPM Moombahton or 184-BPM drumstep; they just want pure energy. They want to absolutely cut loose.