Devin Townsend is a relentless force. An artist who fearlessly pushes the boundaries of artistic expression. A genius, an eccentric mastermind, an orchestrator and a comedian all rolled into one, Townsend has spent the better part of the last thirty years dazzling audiences with his seemingly endless creativity.
That creativity has seen Townsend constantly evolve. It has been that way since his formative days playing alongside Steve Vai. The need to grow has pushed him to the extremities of Strapping Young Lad, the cross-genre expressionism of The Devin Townsend Project and his present-day habit of dropping increasingly unpredictable solo records and unexpected sidequests like DreamPeace. Through it all, the only constant presence in his output has been change. It is a quality that has kept his legion of devoted fans forever expectant of the unexpected. For the man himself, it simply couldn’t be any other way.
Ahead of his fiercely anticipated tour of Australia in November, we caught up with Townsend to find out how exactly his creative process works and what drives him to continue innovating deep into his 51st year of existence.
Making Lightwork of Evolution with Devin Townsend
Mr Devin Townsend, you’re headed back to Australia in a few weeks' time, which is very exciting for us, is it exciting for you?
“It is. It is a long flight, but I'm more than willing to take it over and over again as I have because I love the country.”
If the reaction the tour announcement received from our readership is anything to judge it by, Australians love you right back. Why do you think you have so many Devin disciples down under?
“Wow, doing interviews is really weird for me, because you have to juxtapose your truth with the things that you should say. My truth is, I have no idea why people listen to what I do. So I'm overwhelmed and shocked and thrilled and self-deprecating as a result. But what I should say is ‘Oh, you're all the disciples’, and all this. But I just think it's, it's crazy that people still listen, and I'm so grateful for it. So thank you. It's an abstraction, to be honest.”
Your most recent work that the world has had the joy of hearing, of course, is Lightwork. It was quite well received by your fan base. One thing that is particularly interesting about the record and about your career is that you have continued to evolve. For most people, once they reach a certain point in music, they stop evolving, and sort of just settle on what they're the best at. What is it that drives you to continue innovating?
“I think I think that mirrors the creator's personal development, sometimes not all the time, but sometimes. And for me, as with many people in my life, the past three or four years have forced us or compelled us, to learn and change and grow and adapt. That's the impetus for writing things that are different. It's a reaction to that.”
“One of the things about the way that I write, that I can absolutely understand and empathize with an audience for being confused by is the idea that typically when an artist does something different, it's usually with a fanfare of, ‘well, this is our new direction’, you know? Like with Celtic Frost on Cold Lake, if you’re doing a record that is very different from the last one, the audience is rightfully gonna be like ‘Wait a minute, I really like that, and now you're doing that, like, dude, that's not what I'm into! ’For me, because everything I do tends to be a reaction to the thing before it just goes in all these different ways. Sometimes it's extreme metal, sometimes it's pop, sometimes it's orchestra, sometimes it's prog, sometimes it's country sometimes it is New Age, it's like, and I can fully understand how that would be confusing to people.”
“I guess what answers your original question is, that the way that I write is by nature just a reflection of trying to use music as a way for me to sort my head out as life changes. And maybe that's just not everybody else does. Because my life changes so much, that's why it's different every time. There's no provocative agenda. I'm like, ‘Man, you know, it really fucked up my fan base if I made a record like this’, you know?
I’m not like ‘ I should make Lightwork some sort of hippie dippie commercial thing, or I should make some creepy chaos thing with Puzzle or I should make something super heavy with Deconstruction followed up with Ghosts, I mean that would really screw people up!’ It is not that at all man, I just feel like these are the things that interested me at those periods of life. I always come back to what interests me. So that's why it is what it is.”
How do you decide which project the songs that you are writing are going to be for?
“Mistakes. I don’t have Aphantasia, where you have difficulty visualising things, but I do have difficulty seeing what the final aesthetic of a project should be. I know intrinsically what it should feel like though. As a result, it becomes a push and pull of going down rabbit holes, thinking ‘I bet it is this aesthetic’, only to sit and listen after you’ve done all this work and tracked all these things and put orchestras or drums or choirs in and then realizing ‘oh, it’s not that at all, I wish I had known because that was expensive’. Then I’ll go in a whole other direction.”
“The thing that compels me is intuition, and nine and half times out of ten it is wrong. Then all of a sudden I will get something, it might just be a chorus, it might just be an intro or guitar sounds something super innocuous even. Then I’ll be like ‘Oh, that's it’, whatever that is. But I don't know what it is. I just know that is it. So then I start going down that avenue to try and figure out what components of that created that sense of intrigue. Then nine times out of ten, that doesn't work. Then by the end of it, after a year, you've figured it out. At that point, you're able to really accurately create an atmosphere for somebody.”
“The goal is to create a mood so that when people put on the record, it takes them to a certain frame of mind. So whether or not that's like Casualties of Cool, which is the sort of dark thing or Empath, where it’s a really colourful thing or Lightwork where it’s sort of a pink thing. whatever it is, by the end of it, everything starts to sort of coalesce at the very end. And then you're like, ‘Oh, it's this font’, ‘ Oh, it's this type of art!’, ‘Oh, it's this type of layout!” ‘Oh, it's this type of snare sound!” And at the very end, you finish it and you're able to say, ‘Oh, okay, I was depressed’. Or whatever it was. ‘ Like, oh, my buddy died. and it was really bothering me’, I didn't know that at the time. It would be much more efficient if I knew dude, but I just try and figure it out as I go. And I fuck around until it doesn't bother me anymore.”.
At this point, you’ve made quite the career out of fucking around until it feels right. If I’m not mistaken you’ve put out 28 studio albums across your different projects. That’s a staggering amount of music. Could you envision this trajectory when you were starting out playing with Steve Vai in the early ‘90s?
"Yes and no. You know, because when you say the amount of records, the reason why I'm not shocked by that is that I’ve been doing this for thirty years. So there are thirty records, it is one a year. Every year is different. ‘What I did at summer camp,’ is basically what the albums end up being. What has changed is that when I was younger I was vaguely aware that the process existed, but what was different was the sense of importance or self-importance that I put on the work. Back then it wasn’t tempered by maturity. I hadn’t had kids, I hadn’t gone through real traumas or loss. So it seemed like every time I was making a record, I was reinventing the wheel. It was of utmost importance to the species.”
“All of a sudden you realize the hubris that comes along with that type of thinking. I remember specifically when it happened, it was during Infinity. I remember I had this sort of lightning bolt realization, like, ‘This isn't the be-all-end-all’. ‘This is one of a whole long line of this, it is this year's iteration of this process’. At that point I started thinking, ‘Oh, okay, well, this is what I do, every year, you just try to as accurately as you're able to, document where you're at.’ So yes, and no long-winded but yes, and no.”
What is interesting is that the music industry’s expectations have evolved in a way that suits that process. People now expect to get new music from artists every few months or at least every year, as opposed to the old model of multi-year record cycles. As someone accustomed to creating a record a year, does the new way of operating feel pretty natural?
“I agree. The problem is though that now all of a sudden, I’ve got writer's block. So now everyone is like ‘Well, what’s your next record?’. The label is looking to put it out in the spring and I’m like ‘Dude, I got nothing’. It’s not that I have nothing, I’ve got shitloaded every day I write. I write constantly. I have hard drives full of ideas, songs, movements and passages. But because of the amount of change that has occurred in all our lives over the past three years, from my perspective things thing haven’t settled yet. I don’t know where I am yet. So as much as I am writing, and I have people in my life saying ‘Can you give us a record’, I can’t do that, because the only way I’m gonna be able to finish a record in the style that I do requires a huge amount of effort and if that effort is not juxtaposed with interest, then it’s a drag, man. I have to wait till I find those avenues, and I haven’t found it yet.”
“What I was explaining earlier about going down those rabbit holes, that’s what I’ve been doing for two years. So I’ve got tons of shit, but if somebody says ‘Play me something’, I’d be like ‘Dude, there’s nothing I want to play. It’s all not right yet.’ When it does happen, it happens quickly, because all of a sudden you find the channel that you’re supposed to be in and then you’re like ‘Oh, right. It's this and this and this and this.
”Maybe I'm just a contrarian. Now the industry is facilitating that level of productivity. I don’t have it anymore. But I'm on the verge, man, I have so much stuff, but none of it, none of it scratching the itch yet. Other than the DreamPeace thing, which is just a reaction to the chaos of it all. The problem with how I put out material is if I put out something. people assume that’s the new direction. But I might not do that. It’s just that's the thing that seemed appropriate in that moment.”
With so much music under your various projects, how do you decide what to play in a live setting on tours like this upcoming Australian one?
“Well, the first thing to accept on my side is that you're never going to satisfy everybody or yourself. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Another thing that comes from the amount of time I've been doing this is the hilarity of being a perfectionist and realising how fundamentally imperfect the whole process is. So making peace with that makes the setlist get distilled down to three criteria. One of which is things that I think the audience would like to hear. There are a couple of songs, whether it’s from Strapping, from Ocean Machine or from the back catalogue that people expect to hear. So one criterion is songs like that. The other one is, if you're putting out a new record, then that's as close to your current state of personal evolution as you can be. So it makes sense to represent that to some degree. And then third, and arguably most important for me is I just, I do whatever I want. So between those three things, that's how I put together a set.”
If you could have any song play before you enter a room, like a walk-on song, to say“Hey, I'm Devin Townsend. What's up?” What song do you want it to be?
“Cat Flushing A Toilet by Parry Grip.”
Outside of music, what do you absolutely love to do? What are you a maniac for?
“Mowing the lawn. I love mowing the lawn. That’s when I listen to metal.”
Lightwork is out now.
Devin Townsend
w/ special guests Caligula's Horse*
Wed, Nov 8: Metro Fremantle, Perth
Fri, Nov 10: The Forum, Melbourne
Sat, Nov 11: The Metro, Sydney
Sun, Nov 12: The Tivoli, Brisbane
*Melb, Syd, Bris only.
Tickets are on sale now via The Phoenix.
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