Devin Townsend is resuming work upon his ‘brutal, grotesque’ and ‘fucking absurd’ musical spectacular The Moth… just as soon as he can complete all that needs to be done on his forthcoming Lightwork, and The Puzzle and Snuggles albums first.
Townsend first talked up The Moth, a choirs-and-orchestra-enhanced musical about sex, power, death and God, he says, in a 2017 Noisey interview, claiming that he would need an investment of approximately ten million dollars to pull off the production to his satisfaction.
“It's this symphony with all these cocks and vaginas and death and it's gotta be so over-the-top, with symphonies and choirs and it's got to include the best of the best and it's so fucking expensive!” Townsend said at the time. “I'd like to not think about money, but what I want to do is just get so much money, absurd amounts of money, and just put it all into this thing that's a fundamentally unsellable spectacle, but make it so palatable that halfway through you'll just be like, ‘The fuck are we watching here?’ I love that idea of absurdity and spectacle coming together.”
For those worried that the mercurial Canadian musician might have abandoned this intriguing-sounding project, fear not, it’s still on the table, and Townsend will be picking up the baton just as soon as the more pressing items on his ‘To Do’ list are ticked off, he has revealed in a news-update Twitter thread (accessible below). Hurrah!
I’ve never worked with a producer before, and the idea was for Puzzle and Lightwork to be opposites, so where puzzle was a chaotic, independent art project, Lightwork is meant to be streamlined with a producerAugust 25, 2021
Townsend revealed in June that he has begun work on Lightwork, which is expected in spring 2022, ahead of a lengthy European tour, set to begin in Dublin on April 13.
“I had feared that experimenting with having a producer would dilute it, but man… it’s really good… really happening, and the sounds are quite magnificent.”
Before that, on October 8, will come the release of his “chaotic independent art project”, The Puzzle / Snuggles.
Townsend released the first part of a five-part documentary Making The Puzzle on YouTube earlier this month.
