Ever since his days in half band, half elaborate joke Test Icicles Dev Hynes’ ambition has been growing faster than the ominous patch of mould on my bathroom ceiling and showing no signs of slowing down. While the results of this growth with Lightspeed Champion -or in any other musical situation the twenty-four year old finds himself in- are a lot more pleasant than that of the mould, is there a chance he might have exhausted himself at an early age? ‘I think right now I’ve written everything I’ve wanted to reach to, it’s whether I record it all or not.’ Officially, we’ve only heard three full length albums from him but there’s clearly a lot more going on behind the scenes.
‘I make a lot of stuff, but people only see what Domino release. It’s not like I stop listening to or making certain types of music. I haven’t toured like this in a couple of years but I’ve made and played music live in that time and it’s ranged from R&B to metal.’ The majority of us may not haven’t heard any metal or R&B but those wise enough to have got a copy of new album, ‘Life is Sweet, Nice To Meet You’ have been treated to a very different style of album. At fifty minutes long, complete with two intermissions and an etude, it been compared by many to musicals and stage shows, however this may not have been Hynes’ intention. ‘I would never make this album into a musical. I would write one but if I did I’ve always thought that I’d take a couple of years out and just concentrate on that. Maybe in my 30’s…’
On top of having explored every genre possible, he’s had a crack at most instruments as well. ‘I actually started with cello, then piano, then drums…then guitar. I write quite a lot of cello pieces when I’m bored.’ –like most bored men in their mid-twenties. There are still some that he hasn’t quite mastered, ‘I can’t play brass instruments at all. I’m pretty bad at woodwind. I can write better for woodwind than I can for brass but it’s still so difficult.’ We can probably let him off for that, he still manages to produce songs that any full band would be proud of by himself. ‘There’s a song on the album called There’s Nothing Underwater, and that’s all me apart from the oboe arrangement…well I wrote it but it’s played by a girl called Sally.’
This might all sound a bit pretentious or self-centred, but it’s really not, it seems like he just feels the need to get things out of his system so he can move onto the next project. ‘I always want other people to play the songs [on record] but it’s usually a time issue or if people aren’t around. I’m quite impatient. I want to get it done.’ He’s certainly efficient with his music, ‘a couple of months ago I recorded another album for Blood Orange’ -yet another new side project ‘and I’ve actually already written the next Lightspeed record, but I’m not gonna record it for a long time.’ It’s debatable how long a ‘long time’ is in Dev Hynes world, having once written and recorded an album within five hours, but he’ll definitely be keeping himself busy till the next record. He’s already written songs for Diana Vickers number one album and for plenty of others who he seemed slightly reluctant to mention. So what is there left to do? ‘I’d love to work with Janet Jackson, so much.’ With the way Hynes works, even that doesn’t seem too farfetched, I doubt she’d be able to keep up with him.
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