Hevy Devy Is A Musical Astronaut
Composing music is even better than playing it which is even better than listening to it.
Canadian aleatorical genius Devin Townsend pushes further into the soundscape than perhaps anyone ever has. Some play music while some invent it. An explorer of cross medium magic. Sight to sound to touch to who knows where. If you can see it you can hear it. A synesthesic compulsion to twist a notion to its absolute limit. To provoke… to inspire… an artist embracing the humility of self-realization. To understand is arrogance to even think it’s possible to understand why the universe is like this is arrogance. Just smile. Laugh. Enjoy the show. You don’t have to understand to love it. This is the tempo; these are the tonalities.
Check out the latest album Empath and the tour with (among others):
“Woke from a startlingly profound dream. Violent… transforming. Took a shit in a bag, had two coffees and now headed back to the bunk. This tour has been incredible.” — Devin Townsend plays Kingdom for EMGtv
In fear we run from the inevitable. We run away, but why? All we’re fearing slowly becomes irrelevant. How do you feel? Take a look at your fears; they’re fading now so just walk away. Creation is the process of illuminating the darkness. Bring the darkness forward and face it with artistic process. Make it into music, compose a visual symphony full of monsters… exposed for all the world to see. Go higher. Desire a good life.
“Every time you turn on the news they make it look like life is shit. Don’t believe it. Life is beautiful.” — Devin Townsend Project — If you like Devy’s wisdom make sure you follow his long time collaberator Mike St-Jean, Illusionist Extraordinaire
His lyrics are improvised parallelisms. Words are not enough. Remember me. Calm yourself down. Don’t you remember when we were young. Don’t you remember who you are? We’re strong enough. Two must play a foolish game. So they ride the fear and pain. A decision of who I am. Don’t you forget that you are loved. It’s hard enough.
What’s the colour of vulnerability? The shape of pain. The mind is a cosmos of ideas and the spirits will collide. Remember. The whole world exists in your eye. Turn the page on what we are always searching for. An emotional existence of conflict and struggle; sublime chorus of violent survival. Transcend through art. Go higher. Laugh at the inevitable and see what happens.
“Your vibe attracts your tribe. Fundamentally humanity is hilarious. We’ve got this self destructive, primitive society, where each individual is connected to this first-person thing and there’s this sense of entitlement and self importance and all this but we don’t understand anything. The only hope we have of understanding is surrendering to the chaos.” — Loudwire Interview
There should be darkness, pain, and monsters so we can feel again. This is the genesis of production. A comedic process. Dialectic of the soul. Contradiction and defiance. Discomfort. Intensity…. serenity. Your mind becomes an instrument progressing through it’s own unique sequences and once you can transpose that activity into a creative process you’re generating something truly original through its personal complexity. Finding something real that can be translated through your craft. Playing conflict like an “a cappella” echo.
If you’ve seen the Devin Townsend Project you know there’s no predicting the possibilities if you choose to pursue the aleatorical approach. Your hands will play on there own. Put ’em on the keyboard or pick up that guitar and just play without intention. Occasional bubbles inevitably rise from the deep within you. Something from the nothingness at the source of all your fantasies.
Constrained by your artistic vision without undermining the ability of chaos to function as the genesis of further production. Chasing a vision to provoke the undeniable sincerity of an emotional landscape is more productive than grinding on meanings we can’t ultimately verify anyway.
Devin encourages us to deconstruct all our motives because from the very beginning, as an infant, we “absorb all this stuff” which becomes what we are when we’re older and sometimes the comfort of being dissatisfied is more convenient than letting it all go. When you peal away these layers who knows what we are in the end.
I try to say what’s on my mind in tune. I’m not a poet. When it comes to lyrics… like on the new record there’s a song called Secret Sciences. I woke up in a shitty mood and I just read what I wrote first thing in the morning and in the same way as the music is automatic the lyrics even more so. A lot of times just tons of songs happen while I’m asleep. So I’ll have a song rolling through my head in a dream and I’ll wake up and be like what song is that.. oh its not a song yet fuck I gotta do this. So I pick up my phone and I put on the voice recorder and I’ll be like mumble mumble snore…. and then I send it to myself and when I wake up the next morning I’m like what the fuck… oh and lyrically like the other day… it was super dark… a snake… and I transcribed it. Sometimes it happens like that, sometimes it’s laborious but the most basic way I write lyrics is to take the syllables and I adhere it to the riffs in a basic way. So say the riff is [plays a riff] I might just record myself going [hums… gibberish… whooo someone… right…. ] and I’ll listen back to it and I’ll listen to what came naturally and I’ll transcribe it to [Soon you know I’m waiting…. and I… haven’t known…] I keep refining it by what I think I said and turning it into sentences and then it often surprises you like… oh I’m gay or whatever. [Laughter] — Axe Guitar Clinic
When we’re young we think we know everything. And it all happens to us and we’re the centre. We think we’re so close to figuring out the meaning of life. That as this primitive species we have any connection to understanding anything fundamentally is arrogance. Trying to understand the infinite leads to madness. The production horizon is impenetrable. Devin Townsend has been there and back again. Perhaps we should listen to what he has to say. Look forward more and backward less. As the future presents the past fades. Buy his music here.
