Dawn Of The Dev

Apr 03 2008 4:21 pm,

Profile: Lightspeed Champion

Words: Camilla Pia

   

From his time as one third of talented hipster noiseniks Test Icicles to the fans and celebrities spotted flocking around him at aftershows, you might expect Dev Hynes to be media-savvy, outlandishly attired and impenetrably cool - it couldn’t be further from the truth.

 

He is easy to spot when we meet in a quiet East End boozer, a tall, rakeish figure clad in black and sporting a bushy beard, oversized woolly hat and large thick rimmed specs – and although we are last in a long line of press commitments the sweet, self-deprecating chap is charming, chatty and full of surprises. For a start he has swapped the hip-hop-tinged, art metal attack of his old act for emotional, soaring country music in the form of stunning debut ‘Falling Off The Lavender Bridge’, which was recorded in Omaha with Bright Eyes collaborator Mike Mogis and features contributions from Emmy The Great and members of Cursive, The Faint and Tilly And The Wall. However, as Hynes goes on to explain, it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his creative output.

 

“I can’t stop writing,” he laughs. “I have been trying to compile this discography but I’ve made a ridiculous amount of albums, like nineteen or twenty. There’s at least six hip-hop ones for example, and the next one which I want to get out in a few months is radio friendly pop rock with synths.” So is the songwriter concerned that all this dabbling in different genres might make people take his work less seriously? “I don’t let it worry me,” he says with a smile. “Everything I do is completely genuine and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am totally anti-irony. I don’t joke when it comes to music. When I say that Slipknot changed my life I’m telling the truth and I found it so funny that no-one picked up on how much Test Icicles were influenced by Korn and Coal Chamber.”

 

Apart from his unabashed love of nu-metal, some of Hynes’ other passions include T.I., DJ Drama, Fall Out Boy, Cass McCombs, The O.C., Neil Young’s “80s synth period”, “really lame films” and comics, which he has so obsessed over since childhood that he pulls up his sleeve to reveal tattoos inspired by them. His own graphic novel is set to be published later this year, but before then you can expect a wealth of different offerings including a funk opera sung by friends and based around random stories. People like Dev Hynes just don’t happen often.

 

‘Falling Off The Lavender Bridge’ is out now on Domino.

 

• E-mail
• DIGG
• De.licio.us
• RSS feed

« Back