Music Banter - The Devin Townsend Shuffler

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I have no interest in John Zorn, but I like the idea of Mondo’s John Zorn Shuffler, and never shy of robbing another’s idea, I’m going to do something similar, but with the T-Man. Originally what I heard of Devin Townsend I liked (mostly Epicloud and Biomech) but as I shuffled his music into my playlists I’ve come across some really great music, some not so great and some downright awful. This has not encouraged me to check out any full albums, so this thread will be a way for me to explore his music without diving fully into albums I may not appreciate.

In contrast to Mondo’s thing though, I won’t be reviewing albums. What I’ll be doing is shuffling the content and taking random tracks from random albums. I’ll write a little bit about each track and the album it comes from, and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. Sure. ol’ Dev doesn’t have anything approaching the sixty thousand albums that Zorn has, nor will his music be as varied or genre-crossing as the Big Z, but then I’m not trying to compete with Mondo’s thread, just snatch the idea and run away giggling like a maniac, hoping he’s too stoned to give chase. Townsend is no slouch in the releases department though, with a good thirty or so albums plus compilations and live efforts, so there’s plenty there to get my teeth into. It may be of interest to some (I expect Key will follow it, maybe Anteater) and at worst it should engender some discussion, probably mostly around the theme of “Townsend is a knob/overrated/all over the place etc etc” but it’s all good.

Note: I’m considering doing this with Buckethead too, as I’m interested in getting into his music. I haven’t decided, but any comments on that are welcome, positive or negative.

So, what have we for our first foray into the wild and often not that wonderful world of Devin Townsend? This, actually. Hey that’s weird: one of the few albums I have listened to all the way through…
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Title: “Hide Nowhere”
Released as: Devin Townsend
Taken from: Ocean Machine: Biomech
Year: 1997
Running time: 5.00
Comments: Powerful, punchy opening and it rattles along on a real metal-style riff, good bouncy rhythm, quite catchy with Devin kind of roaring the vocal a little hoarsely. Ocean Machine: Biomech is the second album to be released under his own name, and seems to suffer/benefit from the overproduction issue that a lot of people seem to aim at his music. I personally don’t mind overproduction, but some people hate it. This is a decent song, but I couldn’t say it’s top level or anything.
Rating: 6/10