Richard Devine Is Living the Dream

Dec 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Geary Yelton

           
 

FORGING NEW TIMBRAL TERRITORY, ONE WAVEFORM AT A TIME

Composer, performer and sound designer Richard Devine leads a charmed life. Armed with an impressive arsenal of tools and talent, Devine has evolved from the darling of the experimental electronic dance-music crowd to a major force in sound design for synth builders, computer makers and bastions of international commerce. Along the way, his advertising clients — such as Audi, BMW, Ford, Lexus, Estée Lauder, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Touchstone Pictures — have picked up numerous awards for the commercials he has contributed to.

Bonus Material

Richard Devine Photo Gallery

Related Link: Devine's Personal Website

Related Link: Devine's MySpace Page

Related Link: Devine's Latest Video Clips

Related Link: Latest Projects Devine Has Been Involved With

Devine's career has been like a dream come true, almost from the moment he took his music public. You'll hear his sonic imprint in everything from television network logos to the clicks and buzzes of cell phones. You may also be familiar with his work on Toontrack's Electronic EZX and with his sound libraries from Sony Creative Software (The Electronic Music Manuscript and Pulse: Pure Analog Lifeforms).

Devine's full-length CDs — Lipswitch (Warp, 2000), Aleamapper (Schematic, 2001), Asect:Dsect (Asphodel, 2003) and Cautella (Sublight, 2005) — have had a tremendous impact and earned him a loyal global following. When you're first exposed to his music, you'll notice that it's different from traditional songcraft. There's very little in the way of melody, but it's texturally rich and rhythmically dense — on some tracks, too dense to comprehend in a single listening.

Devine is a mainstay of the electronic underground concert scene, traveling frequently in the United States and around the world to play shows and festivals. Using audio software for both Mac and Windows — as well as a huge collection of instruments including synths and samplers, the waterphone and various musical toys — Devine continues to develop the distinctive musical voice he discovered shortly after his college years, when he studied to become a visual artist.

For this interview, Devine invited me to spend some time with him at his home outside Atlanta. What you see here is only a fraction of our conversation. For the entire interview (lasting more than an hour and a half), see Web Clips 1 through 10 at emusician.com/web_clips/web_clips_1209. And check out Web Clip 11 for a video tour of his home studio.

It's been more than four years since your last album was released. What have you been doing with yourself?

Working on so much commercial stuff, doing sound design with so many companies — they keep me busy. I have some pretty big companies that come to me on a daily basis.

How did that get started?

I released my first album on Warp Records in 2000, a U.K.-based label that releases experimental electronic music, the likes of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada. That same year, I got a call from Mate Galic at Native Instruments. I was touring through Germany, and Mate said, “You should stop by our office. We love your music. We would love to have you come in and work as a sound designer. Have you ever thought about that?”

I never thought about making sounds for anyone else. I've always made sounds for myself. At the time, [Native Instruments] seemed like a little mom-and-pop operation. Some of the first projects were working on Battery and Absynth. I remember Brian Clevenger, the programmer behind Absynth. We did the whole Absynth 2 expansion library. From that point on, I was hired to work on multiple projects.

That same year, Clavia contacted me. They said, “We heard your patches working with Native Instruments. We would love to see if you'd be interested in [creating patches for] the Clavia Nord [Modular G2].” Before I knew it, I was working with Korg, Roland and all these other companies.