Produced by Devin Townsend
Released: May 22
It was always expected that Devin Townsend would make a return to music. For Townsend to quit making music would be just as unlikely as Stephen King giving up writing or Adam Sandler changing his haircut, so it was never a case of if Dr Skinny would be back but when and what it would be like. Ki is merely the first part in a series of four albums that will all be starkly different from one another (the second of which is being recorded as I write), and is in itself far removed from anything Townsend has done before. The closest this comes to anything is Ocean Machine, but even that was intense and bombastic in comparison.
According to Townsend, Ki is something of an ode to sobriety and freedom from chemical dependence. The emphasis is on space and ambience, clean, lilting guitars, quiet vocals and laid-back jams that at times are barely even rock and infinitely distant from the crushing walls-of-sound thrown up by Strapping Yound Lad (Devy promises that the third album of this series, Devastation, will be his heaviest ever). There's very little distortion of any kind and the heaviest it gets is in the last half of "Distruptr" when Devin's voice becomes a growl and the chugging guitars take on a menacing tone. Otherwise, Ki is very much an exploration of progressive ambient rock, rather like a modern imaging of Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side of the Moon era, but without the trippy psychedelia and self-indulgent sections. There is also a bluesier aspect to Townsend's playing, most evident in the smoky "Trainfire", a ricketty rock n roll number that one could almost picture being done by Elvis or Johnny Cash.
It's unlikely that anyone could have predicted that even Devin Townsend would make an album like this as it is such an off-the-wall departure even for him. While Ki is definitely an interesting release, it's not exactly a gripping one. At best, it's an unpredictable detour into early progressive rock and at worst a little directionless and boring (aspects which are, in essence, two sides of the same coin), but at the very least it is vastly different from the usual rock and metal fodder.
- A Monday
- Coast
- Disruptr
- Gato
- Terminal
- Heaven Send
- Ain't Never Gonna Win...
- Winter
- Trainfire
- Lady Helen
- Ki
- Quiet Riot
- Demon League
Rating: 65%
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