Creative mad genius DEVIN TOWNSEND has formally announced the completion of his new record, EMPATH. Devin is someone that needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway. This is the man that produced albums such as:
LAMB OF GOD – “As the Palaces Burn”
SOILWORK – “Sworn to a Great Divide”
And 3 other pages on Discogs regarding his production output alone.
He sang for Steve Vai’s Sex and Religion album when he was 22 years old, had the successful band Strapping Young Lad, and then went on to create both a successful solo career with the Devin Townsend Project and successful solo concept albums in Ziltoid. Have a said the word “successful” enough?
Everything Devin has a hand in becomes creative gold; I’m really wracking my brain right now trying to think of other artists that output quality work of this magnitude.
But to hone everything in, I’ve always daydreamed about sitting with Devin and observing his creative process in order to not only glean wisdom from his accumulated years of experience but also have a look into that other unquantifiable aspect of creative genius and try to understand how someone can consistently hit the mark.
His new album, EMPATH, may give us this look into his mind. According to his announcement, the entire creative process of the album was documented and will be released in conjunction with songs. What I understand is, certain documentary segments will be aligned with certain songs and released on a specified timeline in order to create an engaging experience for the listeners and viewers.
What I think this will look like is this: we’ll get a look inside each song from concept to final form, and be able to see how each song both came from and affected the artist as it was created.
That’s my theory anyway. Either way, I’m stoked for this to get rolled out, it’s one of the most creative release schedule concepts I’ve seen in a while, where the release schedule itself becomes a piece of art.
Follow Devin on YouTube here, Facebook here, and online here. I’m sure he’ll keep us all posted with this pseudo-realtime album construction.
