On Thursday March 27 I went to “The Moth”, Devin Townsend’s rock opera performed live in a venue called “SPOT” in Groningen, The Netherlands. This was the very first time it was performed (there was a second one the night after and both were sold out).
At 20.15 hours Devin Townsend entered the stage, still in his pajama pants—he mentioned he’d barely left the hotel—and went through a very extensive thank list. Then he played three-and-a-half acoustic songs1, followed by an intermezzo where all the players took their positions on the stage. Keep in mind that we’re talking about a huge choir all the way in the back, a full symphonic orchestra with their conductor, a rock band consisting of a drummer, bass player, a piano-cum-guitar player, another guitar player, Devin Townsend and Lynne Wu—singer of the Chinese band OU to top it off. I may have overlooked a few players, and I estimate that the total on stage equalled or exceeded one hundred performers.
Meaning there was not much room for Devin and Lynne Wu to perform operatic theatrics (even if they tried very hard). Anyway, at 21.30 hours the actual performance began and ended at 22.45 hrs, with a five minute break in the middle—so the total playing time was about one hour ten minutes (give or take).
There were visuals displayed on three screens (the same visuals on each screen: a screen behind the stage, one to the left and one to the right). Thankfully, Devin kept his stage chat during the opera to a minimum (probably because he’d already used it all up at the very beginning), so we enjoyed a mostly uninterrupted performance.
Since there was no pre-release of “The Moth”, this was the very first time that it was performed. It’s a complex piece of music, so it’s extremely hard—almost impossible—to determine how good (or how bad) it was. With so many instruments on the stage, the overall sound needed to be very good. I’m not sure it was. It wasn’t bad, but many details got lost in the mix. Admittedly, I stood on the right side of the stage and possibly the mix was better in the very middle of the venue. Nevertheless, most of the time it was hard to hear the rock musicians (at some point I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to keep this an orchestra-and-choir-only show) and sometimes I could barely hear Devin and Lynne’s singing.
There were no rehearsals as far as I know, so maybe these things were better on the second night. Also, the orchestrated parts were (un)surprisingly heavy—hello Wagner—and often overwhelming in their complexity and loudness. Definitely needs more listenings.
Then there were the visuals. I can see the need for them because the actual character performers—Devin and Lynne—barely had room on the stage to stand, let alone deliver theatrical performances. So you add a visual element to compensate for that and enhance the music.
However, two things became clear: most of the visuals looked AI-generated, and—to my eyes—a lot of them were quite hackneyed.
First: the use of AI-generated art. Note that according to some, there was also art made by human artists. Here’s my (probably) controversial take: I think that—up to a certain extent—AI-generated art is allowable. “The Moth” is a highly complex undertaking while Devin Townsend is not a musical millionaire. So his funds are limited and while I certainly hope he makes his investments back2, this cannot be taken for granted.
Meaning he—most probably—had to cut corners (I’m sure he’d have preferred to use human artists all the way, but strongly suspect he simply could not afford this). This is not just true for Devin Townsend. As a self-published author I have—so far—used and paid for cover art from actual artists for my novels. However, copy editing has become prohibitively expensive3; that is, my books don’t sell enough to make up for the costs of professional copy-editing. So yeah—confession time—I use Grammarly. So shoot me.
So while I’m forgiving about the use of AI-generated art in this case, I’m less sanguine about what was actually displayed. Keep in mind that the visuals ran constantly throughout the performance and I’m doing this from memory. Nevertheless, there was an abundance of clichés, to wit:
Bright clouds viewed from above;
My Little Pony wallpaper in combination with:
Unicorns (who did not quite fart):
Rainbows (although the unicorns did march under them);
An angel before the gates of heaven;
Total solar eclipses;
Dark clouds, rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning;
Apocalyptic cityscapes;
Explosions and fire everywhere;
Medieval knights on battlefields;
Animated medieval knights on battlefields, attacking castles and enemy troops;
Andsoforth, etcetera;
And, obviously, a cornucopia of moths, from swarms overtaking the view to quirky individuals to events happening in the outline of a giant moth. It might not have been intended as such, but certainly looked like an avalanche of clichés at times. Compared to the much more humourous graphics in the “Genesis” video, they—for all their opulence—fell short. Sometimes less is more.
Concluding, is “The Moth” Devin Townsend’s towering magnum opus, or a highly ambitious effort that didn’t quite succeed? Again, it’s very hard to say without multiple listenings, yet my initial impression is that it’s an interesting failure. I may eat these words in the months to come (if and when an official video of this performance is released, the live stream is still available for repeat viewing here), but right now I think that Empath is still the true career-defining masterpiece of Hevy Devy. Having said that, I was happy to witness this rock opera in my home country, and I certainly hope more performances in other countries will eventually follow.
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Author’s Note: I know, I’ve been very quiet during March, here on my substack. It’s because I’ve been working hard behind the scenes. I’ve finished doing the copy-editing of my novels “The Three Reflectors of Consensual Reality” and “The Transcendence of Consensual Reality”, and I’m happy because copy-editing (while aboslutely necessary) is my least favourite part of writing. I wanted to et as much of it out of the way as I could.
Now I ‘only’ (snark quotation marks intended) have to finish the copy-editing of the last chapter of “The Replicant, the Mole & the Impostor” and post it in April, and then I can move to the next stage. This involves putting the ‘Forever’ and ‘Replicant’ novels up for sale, and promoting them, while preparing to put up the ‘Consensual Reality’ series up on my substack.
Not only that, but return to a more regular posting schedule. Working on it.
In my social/cultural life, I’ve recently been to an Invesdor event in Amsterdam—of which more this Monday—the Amsterdam Wine Festival yesterday and will be going to Berlin to meet my sister (who resides in Melbourne, Australia) as she attends the Global Disability Summit on behalf of her employer in Melbourne. It ends with a “Brave New World—GDS Club Night” where everybody (me included) can visit.
To quote:
Brave New World will be a festival-like club night on three floors with a focus on diversity and inclusivity. Our goal is to set an example of how it should be, how we can celebrate altogether.
There will be a chill out-area which will feature a multi-sensory installation by Playtronica, designed for interaction with the audience.
The whole event will be as barrier-free as possible on all levels in front of and behind the scenes.
What values do we want in club culture? What should the future of our clubs look like?
What can I say? The rest of the world may be going off the deep end, but in Europe we try to stay sane.
He got bored during “Hyperdrive” and switched to “Life”;
With a nice profit;
I have used a professional copy editor for the ‘Replicant’ novels, but put the ‘Forever’ series through Grammarly;