Tonight, March 17th, will find Devin Townsend performing the first of three 20th anniversary shows for his 1997 album, “Ocean Machine: Biomech“. That set will take place at Hammersmith Apollo in London, England and in light of the occasion, Teamrock.com shared a piece of Townsend‘s recalling the struggles to get the album out and how he views it now. Among the obstacles involved with the album was their studio frequently being taken over by actor Antonio Banderas:
“The studio owner would kick them out every afternoon, so he could get drunk with actor Antonio Banderas and his buddies. ‘Antonio Banderas plays guitar, and it was a small town that they lived in, so he would go in at night with his buddies and they’d drink brandy and bash on these acoustic guitars until six in the morning,” Devin sighs. “As much of a cool story as that is, for a 24-year-old kid that was going crazy trying to get this impossible project done, with no money, I was just like, ‘Fuck off’, you know what I mean? Just give me my studio, I’ve got to finish this stupid record! Daniel and I went crazy trying to get this thing done.”
A rainstorm also ruined the attempts at recording the drums, causing the album to owe a debt to Metallica‘s “Sad But True“:
“The weather took a dramatic turn in the second week, bringing “biblical storms” and power outages. The studio was a back room in an equipment supply warehouse, and Devin and Daniel had run the kick drum through a PA system and into the cavernous space, before mic’ing it up to get a natural sort of reverb. But by the time they got to recording the snare, torrential rain was hammering the building’s tin roof, making it impossible to get a decent sound. Their solution? Sampling the first snare hit from Metallica’s ‘Sad But True‘.
‘If you listen to Ocean Machine, every snare hit has got that guitar behind it going, ‘Chunk’,” he smiles. “I kind of wanted it to sound like a Metallica record at the time, but we couldn’t make it work, so we just pressed play on the CD.”
You can find the whole feature over at Teamrock.com.
