Say what you will about Devin Townsend, but you have to stop short of accusing him of lacking imagination.  Over the course of three Strapping Young Lad albums, his work on Ocean Machine, plus numerous collaborations with the likes of Steve Vai, Stuck Mojo, Zimmer's Hole et al, and the running of his own record label (HD Records), Devin continues to push the boundaries of musical sensibilities to the outer limits.
 
Not that his music doesn't make sense. Rather, each album appears to have become increasingly more introspective and more challenging to listen to, and his latest solo project, Infinity, continues in that vein.
 
Back to back with earlier SYL releases, Infinity demonstrates immeasurable personal and musical growth through what was an often arduous recording process.  Devin certainly sounds like a different person to the one screaming 'I fucking hate you' on  'SYL' (opening track on "Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing").
 
"Just a little bit," he laughs.
  "A funny thing that happened with Infinity is that I just got more serious.  It's easy to stand on a pedastal with music like Strapping because nobody wants to argue with somebody who's screaming.  This is more like an internal commentary of what's going on inside me as opposed to anyone else".
 
Recorded over 18 months in Vancouver, no small part of the recording process was spent in a psychiatric hospital, resulting in an extremely introspective and satisfying listening experience.
  "Everything is autobiographical.  It's almost like I'm standing back and looking at the two sides of my personality, and sort of trying to reconcile things within myself, but you can use it as metaphor for anything else you want to put it to, but my aim for the most part was about me, for myself.  It was a bit ordeal, trying to get that record done.  When I got out, I started recording it.  It was a real power thing for me, a real sense of victory to get through it all.  When I completed it, finally, it was like, I made it".
 
So it seems to fit somewhere between Ocean Machine and Strapping…
"I'd have to agree with that.  The whole idea with Infinity was to create landscapes with music rather than actual songs.  With Strapping and Ocean I went with the whole song structures, like verse chorus verse blah blah blah… but infinity I wanted to be really free form, with parts that could go on forever.  Parts coming in where they were just so wrong.  Like putting together a puzzle with the pieces in the wrong places but forcing them together anyway.  Making really big loud mistakes.  I wanted everything… everything happening at the same time.  I wanted it to be an extremely heavy version of something that's not meant to be heavy in the first place.  Like a fever dream.  When you have a fever and your mind starts to play tricks on you, and you hallucinate or whatever.. your hands feel really big.  I wanted it to be massive without it being speed metal or something like that."
  For all its bluster, Infinity comes together as a seemless whole.  Although final track, Noisy Pink Bubbles, is admittedly "an after thought", the journey paints an increasingly positive picture of this reconciliation of Devin's personality.
 
"It was a conscious decision to put it in that order because I knew when I was writing the record what it had to sound like when it was finished.  There was no disputing the way the songs went".
  I can't help but ask if the grand and epic feeling could be deemed as showboating.
"It struck me as being essential as to what was required to make the songs speak", Devin explains.

"I've always had an interest in musicals…."
  Like the Gilbert and Sullivan style bridge on "Hide Nowhere" (from Ocean Machine)…
"Yeah," he laughs, "It's a shame we can't pull that one off live, but with that sort of background, because I was raised with that sort of cabaret feel, I just wanted it to be dramatic and work on a visual level as well as on an aural level".
 
Undoubtedly Infinity is sure to cop some flak for the album's cover, portraying Devin crouched naked and androgenous…
  "The idea behind this one was to just have an image that was pure.  Like nothing covering it up.  I didn't want a big set of cock and balls on there, because to some people that becomes vulgar, and you can be accused of trying to make a statement.  The statement I'm trying to make is just this - It's what I am, I'm a musician, I'm going bald and I'm kind of funny looking and here's the pictures to prove it.  Now who cares about that:  Listen to the music."
 
"There's no real image.  That's the whole concept with infinity, the image is 'there is no image' you know… That's the only one you can uphold.  No-one's going to question your image if that's what you're going to put across.  Balding naked guy, what can you ask about that?  There's not much left for the imagination".
 

(thanks for Adam Muir for sending this interview)