With BT’s official website defunct for close to a year now, there’s been little in the way of official news over the past few months. Still, here’s a quick round-up of what’s been going on since These Hopeful Machines was released 3 months ago:

These Hopeful Machines has been receiving mostly positive reviews from critics since its release. In particular, USA Today commented that:

BT’s lush, electro-organic soundscapes are so textured, nuanced and melodically inviting that even techno-phobes will be seduced by his forward-thinking musicality.

Wired also gave the album a highly positive review, stating that:

These Hopeful Machines is the culmination of years of that type of meticulous and mathematical creation… These Hopeful Machines incorporates many elements of past albums, with near-perfect transition… it’s an album of ultimate depth and movement.

… If you’ve never liked electronica before, this is the release that could change your mind.

For a full list of reviews and interviews, please check out this thread on the board, which sharpmath is kindly keeping updated.

Meanwhile, sharpmath also stumbled upon a Tumblr page which simply has 15 photos of the video shoots for Every Other Way and The Ghost In You. The video for Every Other Way was supposedly being wrapped up in early April. Nothing further is known about the video for The Ghost In You however, or even if this track will be released as a single.

While we’re on the topic of These Hopeful Machines, it’s worth noting that Feed The Monster, a collaboration with Charlotte Martin, and an as-of-yet-name-unknown track with Bassnectar have both vanished following their mentions on Amazon and Black Home Recordings’ respective websites. As always, time will tell if these tracks will ever see the light of day.

Judging from Twitter updates, it looks as though BT may be colaborating with Armin van Buuren on a track for Armin’s upcoming album, due for release in September. And possibly working on another track with JES as well.

Over on Facebook, BT recently held a vote for a merchandise design competition, with entries submitted by fans. You can view the entries and the results here. He also put up a poll asking if people would prefer a new 4-track EP every year, or a new 12-track album every three years. Votes were 55% in favour of the EP. Whether this will come to anything is pure speculation, but it’s interesting that BT is wanting feedback on something like this.

Lastly, as mentioned at the start, BT’s official website has been defunct for close to a year now - it’s still listing The Rose Of Jericho as the current single, and stating that a “new album” is coming soon, and the message board has been in the process of an overhaul for more than a year (wink wink indeed). Well, it looks like that is all set to change in a month or so. A few days ago, a new BTMusic.com Twitter account popped up out of nowhere - even the man himself sounded elatedly surprised - declaring:

New website, new tour, new single, it’s all going off for BT! Stay up to date with news & development of the new BTMUSIC.COM for 2010

Apparently the new BTMusic.com will be launched within a couple of months, and will feature “AMAZING social web integration”, new merchandise (a given), official videos through YouTube, and will also have a “microsite” version for the iPhone. I know for a fact that many months’ work has been put into this site, so it’ll be very interesting to see the final product.

That’s all for now. Peace out all!

BT has just confirmed on his Twitter that the next single off These Hopeful Machines is Forget Me:

Single news!!! Blackhole Records releasing new single Forget Me w/Mixes by Mr Sam & Michael Cassette June 14th! Contest details soon!

For anyone who’s picked up a physical copy of the album, it shouldn’t be much work to guess what the single cover would be - see this post. Although, the space remaining suggests there’s a good chance that one more single could be released after this. A sticker on the album lists The Emergency as a single, so it’s long been suspected that this is the case. That being said, Breakfast’s Remix of The Unbreakable was featured on Ferry Corsten’s Countdown #142, and Dresden and Johnston are also working on a remix. Time will tell.