Top UK music producer Rian Treanor speaks to We Love Budapest before major Trafó show

The launch of Gábor Lázár’s new album, Boundary Object, gives Planet Mu labelmate Rian Treanor the perfect excuse to come to Budapest for the first time to share the bill with a fellow traveller.

The two take to the keyboards at Trafó’s Main Hall tonight, Saturday 5 March, from 8pm.

“We played together in London in 2015,” Rian told We Love Budapest on the eve of the show. “And our paths keep crossing since. With Gábor’s new album being released, it feels like it’s the right occasion for a full-on party!”

Rian’s Budapest jaunt from his native Rotherham in northern England also represents a rare venture, in physical form at least, since the pandemic forced this ever-inventive musician to explore other avenues and community projects in South Yorkshire – and way beyond.

Described as being at ‘the intersection of club culture, experimental art and computer music’, before lockdown Rian put out a string of releases on Manchester’s Death of Rave label before his debut on Planet Mu, ATAXIA, in 2019.

His touring CV included Berlin’s iconic Berghain, London’s Cafe OTO and the Empty Gallery in Hong Kong. And then there was the Nyege Nyege Festival by the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda, the biggest electronic music event in East Africa.

The subsequent album he made in 2020, File Under UK Metaplasm, fuses fast Tanzanian singeli rhythms with his own high-definition bass patterns. It was at once original, unique and, most of all, highly danceable.

Spending most of lockdown at home with his father and grandparents also allowed Rian to develop bespoke software and build devices to explore rhythmic techniques for collaborations, workshops and live performances online. It helps, of course, that his father is Mark Fell, the music producer and sound artist from Sheffield’s rave days of the 1980s.

The programming language they use, Max/MSP, has allowed them to create a multiplayer platform so that musicians can collaborate on the same work at the same time, whatever the location. Here is a web-based version of their software.

In a few days’ time, for example, Rian and Mark will both be participating in the Algorithmic Art Assembly in San Francisco.

On a more everyday level, Rian also runs remote music workshops for kids in Rotherham and seniors in a care home in Paris.

Having hopped from Osaka to Braga to Athens to Barcelona within a few weeks towards the end of 2019, Rian is now ready for more adventure.


“In a club, you instantly know if something is working or not – they either hit the dancefloor or they don’t. I fancy doing a full-on post-Covid set and going straight for the jugular. Get a few things out of my system!”