Welcome to a new edition of Frankensteining the Talent Pool, a long-running but occasional series on my blog, wherein I express my wishes for talented people I’d like to see work together. I’ve done this series often enough that I have a category for it. Click the Frankensteining the Talent Pool link above the blog post title to see more in this category.
Over the holiday season, I got Hubby a couple of Devin Townsend albums, the 25th anniversary edition CD of Infinity, along with Lightwork on yellow vinyl, plus a CD.
Meanwhile, he got me two Aurora CDs, A Different Kind of Human (Step 2) and All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend.
(We’re not completely old fogeys, what with our compact discs and vinyl albums. We purchase CDs in order to digitize them, so we can load them on our phones. The CDs serve as backups should anything happen to our digital versions.)
Erik and I have similar musical tastes, but they aren’t quite the same. While I can listen to Duran Duran, Ultravox, Muse, and Enya on repeat, he has a wider range of favorite artists and enjoys several genres, including jazz, punk, and metal.
He got me listening to Devin Townsend years ago. Devin is one of the few artists we can both listen to again and again. Not only is he a prolific artist, so there’s lots of his music to enjoy, most of his music strikes an emotional chord with both of us, though we do have different favorites.
Devin composes in a wide range of styles, from ethereal pieces to country to heavy metal. He also has a wide vocal range that can go from metal fry scream to operatic in the blink of an eye. This range always shocks people who do reaction videos if they’ve never heard him before. (Check *any* reaction video for the EMGtv version of Devin’s song “Kingdom” and watch the expression on the reactor’s face during his flip from fry scream to operatic.)
As it turns out, Hubby introduced me to Aurora through a reaction video. A vocal coach reacted to her Nobel Peace Prize version of the “Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)”.
Her voice and performance were so compelling that I *had* to know more about her and began watching her videos on YouTube. Hubby got me her album The Gods We Can Touch for my birthday and it’s been on heavy rotation since then.
After exchanging music over the holidays, as I was digitizing the CDs, Erik asked me to load Aurora’s albums on his phone. He has been as taken with her music and talent as I have and wanted to hear more.
During another reaction video, a vocal coach commented on how Aurora always has complete control of her voice. Shazam! Devin also has excellent control of his voice!
Pretty much simultaneously, Erik and I thought, “These two need to perform a song together.”
Like, it’s *imperative* for the smooth functioning of the universe that these two work together.
Well, okay, maybe that’s being hyperbolic … but, seriously, we think they could create a magical experience with their voices and songwriting abilities.
And, if you’re thinking Devin’s too metal for the ethereal Aurora, like she might be too delicate for such music, if her Wikipedia page is to be believed, heavy metal is one of her inspirations. I mean, come on, she wrote the “Murder Song”! Conversely, Devin regularly writes music that is gentle and, as mentioned above, ethereal.
What could these two talented musical powerhouses create together? We’d love to find out.
It might just blow the minds of all the vocal coaches who make reaction videos.
[Pretty please, Universe, bring these artists together. Amen.]