DEVIN TOWNSEND Says Crowdfunding Campaign Proved Other People Have Emotional Investment In His Music

Felicity Hall of GetYourRockOut conducted an interview with Canadian multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter and producer Devin Townsend at the U.K. edition of the Sonisphere festival, which was held July 4-6 at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire. You can now watch the chat below.

Speaking about his recent crowdfunding campaign for the CASUALTIES OF COOL project and the follow-up to his 2007 album "Ziltoid The Omniscient", Townsend said: "I spent a great deal of my career willingly ignoring the fact that people are participating in it, because it allows me to function without second-guessing it, without thinking, 'Oh, I wonder what people are gonna think of this,' or, 'I wonder what people aren't gonna think of this.' 'This is too this,' or 'This is too that.' And so, all of a sudden, the pledge campaign thrust into my reality the fact there's a lot of people that participate in this and have an emotional investment in it, or what have you, and it threw me for a loop in a number of ways."

He continued: "I've been talking in interviews recently about how it makes you feel about yourself. I mean, it's really hard to foster self-love; it really is. I think a lot of people who claim that they do have a definite lack of self-loathing are either lying or just in a place that I don't relate to. Because I find it very difficult for me to not hate myself. So the whole pledge-campaign thing has really been like... It's like taking a compliment. If someone says, 'Hey, you're good at this,' or 'You're this or that or the other thing, my first reaction… a lot of people's first reaction is to turn it around or to divert the attention or whatever, but in a sense, that's really rude. And so, basically, my thought on it is it's forced me to not only accept that kindness from people without, sort of, flipping it around, but also, how do you continue with the knowledge that there are a lot of people that participate in it? So it's given me a good theme for the 'Ziltoid' record. So thank you."

Townsend's CASUALTIES OF COOL project was released without record-label backing. He told BluntMag.com.au about the sound of the CD: "If there's anybody who's new to what I do, who maybe heard 'Liberation' or some of the songs off 'Epicloud' and thought, 'This is really cool, I could get into this,' you're going to hate CASUALTIES. [laughs] I mean, really, it's as opposite of 'Epicloud' as 'Ghost' was to 'Deconstruction'. It's this weird, dark, not evil but verging on it, bluesy, Johnny Cash-y, strange, quiet folk record. But I love it, it's the one record that I've done over the past 10 or 15 years where I can truly say, 'This is where I am right now.'"