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Interview: Lightspeed Champion

Written by: admin

January 1, 1970 · Filed Under Blather

30 July 2007 Café Kick, Shoreditch
The former Test-Icicle, Lightspeed Champion is late, ironically. When he joins Music Towers in London’s Café Kick, Devonte Hynes is still reeling from last night’s “disastrous” gig. A broken guitar string and a lack of sleep are blamed. Significantly, his debut LP due in January 2008 is all about sleep deprivation. “The album’s name Falling Off The Lavender Bridge is a reference to a lavender-filled frog my mum gave to me because I’ve always had trouble sleeping,” he says. “It’s really bad actually. The album’s pretty much about sleeping and dreaming.”
Falling Off The Lavender Bridge was recorded over January-February 2007 with Saddle Creek Records’ house producer, Mike Mogis. Dev had to fly out to Omaha to record it but he is used to cross-Atlantic flights, returning regularly to his birthplace Houston. “I go back to Houston for Christian-related family holidays, to see my aunties. I also went to a Christian camp there,” Hynes reveals. “I believe in religion but don’t believe in a religion. When I was 15, I was really really Christian! I still have a huge interest. There aren’t many religious undertones to my music just a really low level through the songs.” 
His connection with America doesn’t stop there. He claims his influences are all American. “ I paw over the American Billboards on a weekly basis.  I have really really commercial tastes. I love Maroon 5! I love American hip hop, John Brion, Jason Mraz, The Dixie Chicks, the new albums from Ciara and Ryan Adams. And there’s a rapper called T.I. who went to Billboard number three in the week of release! I’ve never had an interest in UK music. I don’t know anything about what’s going on here and because of that it looks like maybe my tastes are more obscure but actually it’s bigger!”
Dev’s former band Test-Icicles may have been another one of those misconceptions. “It was awful, truly awful,” Hynes says of the trio’s latter days. “We had just been a group of friends who used to form bands every day, record an album’s worth of songs in a day. Suddenly we were being offered recording contracts. I’d hate to see a band that I liked not bothering and it was getting to that point. So we stopped.” Now his live band is assembled from a pool of musician friends who perform when they can. “They are a fixed group of people and they randomly play when they’re available. I play with them when they’re doing their stuff.”
As Hynes is talking, he is struck by the fact his first ever release as Lightspeed Champion is out as of three hours ago. ‘Galaxy Of The Lost’ is a great introduction to what Lightspeed Champion is about, in a nutshell, the polar opposite of Test-Icicles. The single is folksy and clever, doffing its hat to his first love; musicals. “My favourite musical would be Hair,” he decides. “Actually,” he says with a widening smile, “I’ve done a cover from Hair for the B-side to the next single in October - ‘Let The Sunshine In’. I forgot about it. That’s one of the greatest songs ever written. Then there’s The Rocky Horror Show. I think it actually changed my life. I had this thing where I had to listen to a moment from it over and over again. Then I needed to learn how to play it, then I needed to make something similar. That’s how I’ve always worked. I’m really compulsive obsessive like that. I’m obsessed with songwriting.”
Neither Maroon 5 nor Christian camp songs sound like the kind of premium fodder a gifted songwriter needs for inspiration. Regardless, Hynes’ songwriting skills are prodigious and unbounded by genre. “I just write in a lot of styles. I’m writing hip-hop and RnB songs. I’m writing for other people as well. I literally just want to write songs,” he reasons. “I don’t have a fixed way of writing. I write in so many different ways it doesn’t seem make any sense. I wrote seven songs off the album in one long heap of writing on the plane.”
It is quite clear Devonte Hynes much prefers to be holed up writing and recording rather than performing his songs, especially now he is the centre of attention. “I don’t understand why so many people would pay money to hear me moan about girls and my stomach accompanied by music. It’s completely ridiculous. I’m constantly shocked that anyone likes anything I do because I tend not to. The 229 gig was probably the first time I’ve enjoyed playing live in – God knows! The stage fright is much worse now. The only reason I’m playing live is because I want to get the songs across and I can only do it through me at the moment. I’d rather do it through someone else. Like writing songs for and with Florence & The Machine, I’m happy with that.”
Whether he likes it or not, Hynes is a natural on stage; funny, affable and self-effacing. His most whimsical side can be seen in the ‘Galaxy Of The Lost’ video where he is surrounded by Muppets, although even this has a dark edge: “That video is because of REM, nobody really knows this. Sesame Street used to have bands perform. REM did ‘Furry Happy Monsters’ like ‘Shiny Happy People’. I wanted to make it like that but with Gremlins running around.” He pauses as if to consider revealing the next part of the story. “My life is plagued with coincidences but this is a really big coincidence which really freaks me out. ‘Galaxy’ is the first song we recorded in Omaha. I was a wreck, sleeping but weirdly. I was having this recurring nightmare where Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors was eating my family. We finished recording ‘Galaxy’, went back to my house, turned the TV on and Little Shop Of Horrors came on! Then I told Ferry Gouw, who did the video, we wanted REM, Sesame Street and Gremlins. He came back saying, ‘Yeah, then we could have this weird Audrey II creature wrapping its arms around you!’ He did not know! It was just weird.”
Hynes’ febrile imagination not only finds vent in nightmares and songs, but also in comic books. Currently, he is busy writing and illustrating his Cloud-Man stories. “He’s this little guy, just a cloud – man,” Dev explains. “I’ve got a few comic books that are going to come out that I think Domino are going to print. I never really tell anyone about them - I get embarrassed about my drawings.” And his name? Lightspeed Champion has a certain comic-strip superhero ring about it. “Oh, it’s a comic I used to draw when I was 13. He’s this guy who lives on a maths-based planet. There’s loads of long division and stuff. I just thought it was a good name.”