Having heard the story of The Puzzle unfold through The Devin Townsend Podcast, this album is an expected disappointment. That's not to say the music here isn't to be enjoyed but It seems the activity at play hasn't produced anything special other than a meandering ambient detour. It groans and croaks with oddities between its often smoothed out exterior. It felt like this would be the case. Hit by last years lock-down woes, Devin set out to collaborate with his colleagues online, given the situation.
Stumbling into his own musical puzzle, Dev found himself intrigued by the task of assembling together all the pieces his fellow musicians sent him. As suspected, the curiosity of such an interesting and difficult task mostly remains with him alone. For this listener, the outlines of each piece are blurry and its final composition seems more like wedged pieces lining up to be stretched and twisted into shape than a picture.
The Ambient framework is a crutch that has an array of bold musical ideas punching through its pale tranquility. From whirls of machinery electronics, to guttural shouts and spoken word. Pan flute adventures, whispering vocals and choirs in unison. Dramatic pianos, animated drum fills and frenetic Saxophone leads. These wild variety of contributions never quite escape themselves, however which such a deep web of sounds, its hard to know where his contemporaries parts start and end.
With that though comes a fair helping of obvious offerings that get wedged in, feeling indifferent and out of step with the vibe and pace, mostly because it meanders and uses foggy washes of sound to transition and move in any direction. It all just feels a little meaningless and where Dev leans on his traditional stylings, they too emerge from the haze rather than setting structure and form which would off aided this greatly. As said, this was a expected disappointment. A difficult task for any musician. I didn't expect much other than a couple of curious listens and that is all I got.
Rating: 4/10