He also started a new solo project called Blood Orange (a “slightly disco Chris Isaak Oriental thing”). These covers are rarely heard by another soul, although in 2007 Dev put his Nimrod take on Myspace (Green Day continue to nurse their cover of Falling off the Lavender Bridge). He also covered, this year, something like thirty records in their entirety – recorded them and everything – while sitting around his apartment (his latest, as of this writing, is Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard A True Star). – wrote and recorded with Solange (sister of Beyoncé, a well known R&B performer). – wrote and recorded with Basement Jaxx (see “My Turn,” the new single from their recent record). – co-wrote with legendary composer and arranger Van Dyke Parks, the fruits of which will see release in the near future. – arranged for and sang with The Britten Sinfonia orchestra, conducted by André De Ridder and Andi Toma. – sang songs from Moondog’s Sax Pax for a Sax with the London Saxophonic at London’s Barbican Centre on the 10th anniversary of the composer’s death. – performed Cat Stevens’s soundtrack for Harold & Maude at a special screening by the British Film Institute. So he scorned the world, holed up in his apartment, and began writing Life Is Sweet! Nice to Meet You. Early Dev Hynes band history involves several shitty punk bands whose names, according to him, “involved a celebrity’s name of some sort, either exactly copied, or made into some sort of irrelevant pun.” (No examples were provided, but one assumes that ‘Meg Ryan’ and ‘Crispin, Her Fingers Are Blue, Glover’ can’t be far from the mark.) Dev’s shitty punk band run culminated in Test Icicles, a shitty punk band that was actually pretty good, taking a skewed approach to shitty punk that telegraphed an intelligence not always present in the genre (‘Test Icicles’ is an anagram for ‘Eel Tics Tics’ (probably).Įxtensive touring had ravaged his throat, and in December he underwent surgery that left him unable to speak for weeks, incapable of anything but whispers and scowls for a good while after that. Next came cello, then the double bass, drums in high school, all the while teaching himself guitar. He began piano at age 7 (and yet he doesn’t hate it today). A selected history of Dev rather breathlessly testifies to as much: Dev Hynes is a man who doesn’t like to sit around waiting for results by the time the results are in, he’s on to bigger and better, or at the very least worse but different. Again, the busy accompaniment of 'Bye Bye Icarus' suffocates the largely spoken (rather than sung) vocals, except for glimpses where strings and/or accordion double or imitate the vocals.What about the man behind the Lightspeed Champion moniker? Who is he? Where did he come from? How much free time does he have? Working backwards: very little. Throughout both 'Underwater There Is Nothing' and 'Bye Bye Icarus' which follows, interjections of strings and particularly accordion bring a kind of continental feel to the tracks. Certain sections of the track sound luscious, well-arranged parts with Latin/Bossa feel contrasting smoother sections yet in other sections, the hectic instrumentation almost smothers the vocal melody. Onto 'Underwater There Is Nothing', a reworking of a similarly titled track from his February-released album, Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You, there's a contrasting feel one which blends a hectic and uncomfortable, meandering accompaniment and prominent hi-hat punctuation with weary vocals. Combining strummed acoustic guitar, bass and drums with squelching low synths over which dreamy chorused vocals meander, Lightspeed Champion offers his version of ''Til I Die' as a weird hallucinogenic blend. Opening with ''Til I Die', a Beach Boys cover with a dreamy kind of Flaming Lips meets Blur circa Think Tank album vibe composer, songwriter, producer and musician Devonté Hynes, better known as Lightspeed Champion, immediately evidences his 'Bye Bye' EP as a multi-timbral, experimental offering.
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