ATB Feat. Sean Ryan - When It Ends It Starts Again

Brian McCalla has been performing and creating electronic music for three decades starting as a young amateur composer / MIDI connoisseur and DX7 /Juno programmer. Influenced by Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre in the 80's, Depeche Mode and New Order in the early 90's, and then in his introduction to Techo and Trance starting at raves in the late 90's and 00's he developed his affinity for the pensive and melodic tracks of Paul Van Dyk, Rank 1, Paul Oakenfold, and later those of Cosmic Gate, Markus Schulz, Roger Shah, and John O'Callaghan.

A prominent and active user to this day of hardware synthesizers and samplers with virtual instruments backing his tracks, he believes that the soul of music still lies in the tactile, immediate creativity afforded by playing actual keys on real synthesizers. Regardless of whether you're talking about his two Access Virus(es?), Roland JP-8000, Alesis Fusion, Korg Triton, Roland MC-303, Korg Microsampler, Novation X-Station, Korg Radias, Alesis Ion, Korg Microstation, Roland MV-8800, Arturia Microbrute, Korg Volcas (all of them), Novation Xiosynths (4 of them), Korg Monologue, M-Audio Venom, or Korg Kaossilator Pro, they arelike singers to him: each with their own voice and personality  (though he admits that Sylenth, Z3TA, and Massive genuinely do have a character of their own, as well). 

He's a proud "nerd" when it comes to synthesis and timbre design and can banter about whilst comfortably throwing synth vernacular around like it's his native language (indeed, he's the Top Writer on Quora in the topics of Synthesizers, Trance Music, and Samplers), he doesn't let the technobabble distract him from the organic and visceral emotion that music ultimately derives from the transistors and and resistors.

"I'm actually a professional engineer and green / renewable technology consultant in my day job" (he's modest; as he also teaches engineering and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, energy management, nonlinear dynamics,  and STEM education) "but as Nate Raubenheimer's (Protoculture) soon-to-be-timeless album title so eloquently suggests, Music IS More Than Mathematics, and I realized early on that the technology and phrasing and mixing and counterpoint and sidechains and filtering are all servants to music as the best tool by which living, loving, feeling HUMANS communicate EMOTION."

"To me, Trance is the pinnacle of that relationship; and while the commercialization of dance music has led to the decline of melody and feeling in favor of 'drops, wubs, and sub-bass  air pulses', the delicate ecstasy of the breakdown and sublime surge of absolute natural euphoria that progressive, uplifting, Psy, hard, tech, Goa, vocal, dream, and epic sub-genres afford us is something impossible to quantify, but unmistakable once you've been tasted its kiss."

If hardware synths are his tools, then choppy basslines, pulsing sidechained hypersaws, and passionate analog glowing leads are his weapons. Seeing tracks as 8 bar "chapters" that must be carefully staged to tell an engaging story, he sculpts the introduction, steps in rising action, climax, and denouement as a fiction author might pen the next spy thriller. 

Some may miss this analogy, though, and liken the simplicity (upon distracted first listening) of his songs to that of Hemingway in "Old Man And The Sea". 

"I've been accused of creating tracks that are too 'simple' or 'subtle', or 'old school' and that's true. My songs are simple and the melodic content can be subtle, but it's in that innocent and sublime space that I find the most raw emotion and the perfect balance between anticipation and surprise; thus, simultaneously relaxing the listener while exciting them with periodic shots of dopamine to their synaptic clefts. In spite of their superficial simplicity, I try to include in my songs those 'eargasm' moments!"

Emotion, though, at the end of the day, governs everything that he does in his Trance compositions. 

"I often tell people that the 'EDM' and the 'Dance' monikers are only a necessary structure for Trance and not the end result. If people find that they can dance to it, great...but what I'm really hoping to do is to get their hairs to stand up and create those emotional experiences that send chills of real feeling through the core of their being. If a stream of superimposed sine waves can cause a listener to feel love...or loss...or joy, then I've done my job."

He then adds, "because I've communicated what I was feeling when I wrote it."


ATB Feat. Sean Ryan - When It Ends It Starts Again

Fabian Matthes