Devin Townsend Is Promoting The Upcoming Worldwide Release Of "Casualties Of Cool"

Following its original release in 2014, Devin Townsend’s debut as Casualties Of Cool will see a full worldwide release on the January 15th, 2016, with the two CD’s joined by a brand new bonus live DVD featuring a full set filmed at London’s beautiful Union Chapel during the short run of shows that took place around the albums launch.

For Townsend, ‘Casualties of Cool’ is an escape – from over 20 years of relentless productivity, of the pre-conceptions of him that come with being one of the biggest names in his sphere. A project over four years in the making, largely at night when home from turning the dial up for the day job in the studio, ‘Casualties of Cool’ has seen Townsend look at himself in order to go forward. Digging out a battered old Fender amp and telecaster, he revisited the rootsy country and North American folk music of his youth. It provides the backbone of the album that’s eventually come to fruition, opening with ‘Daddy’s’ shuffling percussion and bluesy finger-picked motif, resurfacing during ‘The Code’s’ sultry twilight atmospherics and ‘Forgive Me’s’ hushed ambience. It’s a subtly applied but vital part of this record, providing the bones for the flesh to hang from. “My childhood was full of that type of music,” says Townsend. “At Christmas my grandfather would insist on the whole family sitting around singing uncomfortably along to Johnny Cash songs and Irish stuff like the Clancy Brothers. It was a big part of my childhood, it’s not like I’m putting on a new hat here.”

The luxuriant vocals of Ché Aimee Dorval have draped themselves over a previous Townsend release – 2009’s Ki – and so it was perhaps no surprise that the two would find their way back to each other. Recorded by Aimee herself on her laptop, her voice is as important as the shuffling folk that permeates the record, in acting as a glue for the whole thing – her wistful tones hold together constructs so free-form at times they might disintegrate.