Lightspeed Champion

What about the man behind the Lightspeed Champion moniker? Who is he? Where did he come from? How much free time does he have? Working backwards: very little. Devonté Hynes is a man who doesn’t like to sit around waiting for results; by the time the results are in, he’s on to bigger and better, or at the very least worse but different. A selected history of Dev rather breathlessly testifies to as much: He began piano at age 7. Next came cello, then the double bass, drums in high school, all the while teaching himself guitar. Early Dev Hynes band history involves several shitty punk bands whose names, according to him, “involved a celebrity’s name of some sort, either exactly copied, or made into some sort of irrelevant pun.” Dev’s shitty punk band run culminated in Test Icicles, a shitty punk band that was actually pretty good, taking a skewed approach to shitty punk that telegraphed an intelligence not always present in the genre. Test Icicles were picked up by Domino, and when, in the spring of 2006, the bandmates parted ways, Dev started the Lightspeed Champion project on Domino. In early 2007, he flew to Omaha and recorded with Mike Mogis and soon after began playing shows. He spent the next two years on the road playing in Europe, North America, and the Pacific Rim. A week after the Lavender Bridge tour reached its terminus at the 2008 Reading & Leeds Festival, Dev bought a plane ticket to New York and changed the end of his email address from “.co.uk” to “.com”. The extensive touring had ravaged his throat, and in December he underwent surgery that left him unable to speak for weeks, incapable of anything but whispers and scowls for a good while after that. So he scorned the world, holed up in his apartment, and began writing Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You. It was finished by March. He also blogged profusely, wrote short stories, and began work on a comic book with his girlfriend, graphic designer Nicole Michalek; the stories were made available by Domino in late 2009 as a collection called Bad Era of Me; and the comic book, Juice This!, was released as part of CTRL ALT SHIFT’s campaign exploring corruption in November of that year. Dev’s musical drive – his need to remain musically active – is more apparent than the hat on his head. He’s often not wearing a hat, for one thing – he is always, always making music. In 2009 alone, Dev: Performed Cat Stevens’s soundtrack for Harold & Maude at a special screening by the British Film Institute. Sang songs from Moondog’s Sax Pax for a Sax with the London Saxophonic at London’s Barbican Centre on the 10th anniversary of the composer’s death. Arranged for and sang with The Britten Sinfonia orchestra, conducted by André de Ridder and Andi Toma. Co-wrote with legendary composer and arranger Van Dyke Parks, the fruits of which will see release in the near future. Wrote and recorded with Basement Jaxx (see "My Turn," the new single from their recent record). Wrote and recorded with Solange (sister of Beyoncé, a well known R&B performer). He also covered, last year, something like thirty records in their entirety – recorded them and everything – while sitting around his apartment. These covers are rarely heard by another soul, although in 2007 Dev put his Nimrod (Green Day album) take on Myspace. He also started a new solo project called Blood Orange, a “slightly disco Chris Isaak Oriental thing”. Lightspeed Champion released his second album, Life is Sweet! Nice To Meet You on February 1st, 2010. The follow-up to 2008’s [album artist=Lightspeed Champion]Falling Off The Lavender Bridge is an epic collection of twelve pop songs, two instrumental intermissions and one piano étude. Lightspeed’s early leaning towards American country dressings is traded here for a palette that draws on classical music and even musical theatre. Producer and mixer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) assembles the eclectic grab-bag of influences: joltingly ‘70s guitar and synth sounds, classical piano, Greek choruses shouting reprisals, and at least one ukelele-driven moment. Dev Hynes is 24. You will not be surprised when I tell you that he sleeps, on average, less than three hours a night. http://www.lightspeedchampion.com