Devin Townsend is now streaming an in-depth look at his 2021 record The Puzzle. The Puzzle was released in conjunction with Snuggles, and was the more chaotic side to Snuggles' calm ambient nature. The duo were an unaffiliated prelude to Lightwork, which saw Townsend going back to his usual progressive metal self. The Puzzle is available here.
"Originally released in 2021, here's the full documentary about the making of my project The Puzzle (dialogue is a little awkward in hindsight, but it was an awkward time…so…) it gives an idea of how The Puzzle and its companion album Snuggles came about during the whole Covid era.
"Like Dreampeace, this was essentially a thing that happened alongside other musical things I was working on, but in many ways it was the follow up to Empath. It was not expected (Pandemic changed so much at the time) and was my direct representation of the whole Pandemic / lockdown experience. Time will surely not change many opinions, but I wanted to finally at least put the film up, and also have the opportunity to revisit it with time gone by. For better or for worse: It was really important to me and it took a ton of work.
"Its not indicative of The Moth or what I'm writing at the moment… Like SYL, Lightwork, DreamPeace, Casualties, Ki, Epicloud, Ocean Machine, Devlab etc etc… they're all just things that compulsively made sense at the time. The Puzzle is very intentional, but essentially sounds like chaos … but yes: its meant to sound like that.
"Thanks for allowing me that latitude to do the things I feel are important to me… I look forward to revisiting this project over the week with you as well, and Im interested to see what happens next. Times are always changing and this next phase seems really new and interesting.
"I have only a vague idea at this point though, and reflecting on some of these 'lost' projects from the past few years helps give me perspective, so cheers for watching if you do."