ProgBeat: “Another Mountain”
Although no date is officially set, this summer Devin Townsend will be releasing the first of a 4 album series (which will later be issued in a box set with 8 records and a DVD), under the name the DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT. And I’m not going to even try to tell you what to expect. Townsend’s always been the kind of musician who’d post on his forum, teasing fans with tiny bits of information about upcoming releases but never revealing too much–always shrouding the specifics in a cloud of vagueries: lines like, “It’s gonna be a mix between Opeth, Strapping Young Lad, The Beatles, and Sixpence None the Richer.”
Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit with that (Townsend would scoff at the association with Sixpence). But you get the idea.
No matter what he says to pull the rug of preconceptions out from under his fans, though, there’s always an underlying tone of excitement and giddyness to his statements. And that’s never been more true than this with this series, being that he’s recently quit all drugs and alcohol, and is “re-learning” how to make music now without them.
Even though Townsend’s never shyed away from experimentation, it’s easy to tell from his statements about the DEVIN TOWNSDN PROJECT that this one is different. This is a challenge for him. He’s testing himself, seeing how far he can go, what he can try, how he can manipulate the form and make himself feel a whole different breed of release. In Ki, the first piece of the set–a “subtle, severe album,” he calls it–Townsend sets out to prove that “the whisper is louder than the roar.” It’s about control, he says, “a little a.m radio playing in the corner,” warning that many fans of his heavier work may even be underwhelmed by it. It’s the beginning of the story, a reintroduction of self. And after it, the albums get heavier, then heavier, then finally conclude (in what I’m guessing will be a perfect moment of peace, a quiet declaration of acceptance and self-assertion).
Whether Townsend is making an album about a coffee-disgruntled alien-attack like he did in Ziltoid the Omniscient, or if he’s painting layered and beautiful soundscapes like in Terria or Ocean Machine, he’s always trying something new, never settling. And THE DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT promises to be an epic. It seems at once brutally serious and smirkingly joyous (check out the teaser and listen for the Elvis riffing), still retaining that Townsend humor that promises to never take itself too seriously (see Ziltoid; see the “skullet,” Devin’s old haircut).
Each album in the series will have its own band that he hand-picked to best capture the tone of the separate pieces. There will be a string section, there will be screaming, there will be distortion-less guitar lines, ambience, grace, and, undoubtedly, there will be a renewed sense of music-magic and creative vigor.
He’s definitely working the gamut here. You may not end up loving every color in the spectrum, but I’m sure the rainbow will be humbling.
“Please enjoy,” Townsend writes. “It’s good to be back.”
God yes.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 11:17 pm and is filed under music, prog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
