Richard Devine revelation

Saturday, Oct. 11, Atlanta to Seattle to Vancouver Richard Devine has a given name that would make British glam rockers and L.A. hair metal guitarists jealous. The 27-year-old technophile from a manicured golf course community in Roswell has an advanced grasp of textural sonic architecture. And he's currently embarking on a 20-dates-in-30-days tour — El Tour De Los Guapos (The Tour of the Ladies' Men) — along with his labelmates from Schematic, the esteemed American home of digitally aided composition for which Devine records, masters and does A&R.

But all this, of course, is not going to do much to get him ahead in line at the airport. Devine's late to catch a 9 a.m. Saturday morning flight to Seattle and security personnel want to inspect every single electronic gadget — laptops, hard drives, cameras, PDA, cell phones — in his tightly packed luggage. Against all odds, Devine makes it on the plane with only seconds to spare.

"I wouldn't have even made it here if it weren't for my girlfriend helping me pack. She made sure I had everything I needed," says Devine, listing the portable comforts of home. "Shirts, socks, cables, granola bars, instant cream of wheat, even the porn and KY Liquid."

In Seattle, former Atlanta DJs Eve and Motomasa Mori meet Devine at baggage claim. They've relocated to Vancouver, the site of tonight's show, and will drive him across the border. All the way up I-5, Devine and the Moris talk music, with occasional sightseeing tangents. Even exhaustion cannot dull Devine, the self-proclaimed "cultural sponge," in his desire to decipher the unfamiliar territory, whether music or geography.

Devine has been from Barcelona to Reykjavik, Oslo to Tokyo, but never in Vancouver. But Vancouver has an aesthetic that immediately appeals to his sensibilities. He often describes his work in terms of its influences — for his latest release, Asect:Dsect, these are modern architecture and late 19th-century abstract artists: Itsuko, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers, John Maeda, Francois Bacon. The attraction has to do with contrasts — blending beauty with chaos, making functional environments out of violent juxtapositions. Vancouver — with its luminous glass spires jutting into the sky against the cradle of surrounding mountains, its jittery methadone addicts lingering one block from an Asian market and around the corner from an angular retro-futuristic mall — is a study in juxtaposition. And those contrasts — nonlinear design, highly stylized thrash-metal apexes, seismic spasms of pile-driving rhythm and ionized noise, vice-like compressed beats swept by foamy melodies — drive Devine's music.

By show time, Devine's labelmates have not shown up. They're announced as M.I.A. on small printouts plastered near the entrance of the Brickyard, the punk venue serving tonight as center of laptop expressiveness. Seems the rest of the Schematic roster were turned away at the border. Having been unable to secure performance permits, Josh Kay and Romulo del Castillo, of the duo Phoenecia, Miami's Otto Von Schirach and Brooklyn's Nick Forte weren't exactly embraced as cultural ambassadors by the border patrol. It didn't help that, when asked about previous felonies, the guys volunteered information about their involvement in a couple illegal raves. It probably also didn't help that, when told they could enter the country without their electronic gear, they ask the border guard if porn stars had to leave their cocks behind to enter Canada. Whatever the cold and clinical reputation laptop musicians might have, it's this sort of attitude that defines Schematic Records.

Devine takes the stage wearing the Minor Threat he bought earlier in the day. It's a warning that the stabs and squalls of his digital hardcore are only for the headstrong. The audience is primed, though, and the explosion of admiration leaves Devine beaming.

Tuesday, Oct. 14.
?Vancouver to Seattle

In sharp contrast to the maniacal Brickyard performance, Devine is more mannered on Monday and Tuesday, camera in hand, coursing with the nervous desire to document every angle of unfamiliar terrain or cultural oddity.

Before leaving Canada, he visits scenic overlooks and specialty record shops, and makes a "two-second" trip into the Canadian Music Center that lasts 20 minutes. Devine can't pass up a chance to share music and anecdotes. Spend enough time with him and you're sure to hear lines like, "Oh yeah, I'm friends with (fill in assorted academics from Robert Normandeau to Maryanne Amacher), or "Oh yeah, I got really fucked up with (insert British anarcho-electro pioneer, such as Autechre)."

It's not that Devine's a name-dropper, more that his infectious enthusiasm attracts an international web with whom he can exchange esoterica. While technology can be an insular experience, Devine thinks we're all one Firewire cable away from a new perspective.

But wires can't bridge time and space. So Devine heads back to Seattle pining for the girlfriend in Atlanta he calls three times a day. And he pines for the time to do the LSD an elated concert attendee in Vancouver gave as a parting gift.

As the others finally join up with Devine, the tour properly convenes at Seattle's Chop Suey, a former Chinese restaurant on Capital Hill. Forte, who joined Schematic based on his appreciation of Devine's digitally drafted dementia, brings years of experience playing live in groups such as Rorschach and Christmas Decorations; he's the main impetus for launching this tour. Otto Von Schirach brings costume-swapping and ass-slap mic rantings over IDM — not intelligent dance music, but intelligent diarrhea metal. And as Phoenecia, Josh Kay and Romulo del Castillo (who also run the Miami-based Schematic) exchange and regurgitate a palate of sounds swapped between two laptops into a dense, frenetic robo-funk groove.

"Nick is the introspective indie, Otto the extrovert, a hip-hop circus," Devine explains. "And Josh and Rom are Newcleus on 'shrooms."

"Richie goes on and it's Slayer meets a laptop," Forte reciprocates. "He commands a crowd in such a primeval way I haven't seen other laptop artists do."

Watching Devine's facial expressions as he performed in Vancouver — his features contorted as if every finger sweep across his laptop's trackpad were as painful as bending the taut steel strings of a guitar — it looked as if he was lost in a continual orgasm. To drive the point home, at one point Devine decided it would be funny to share with his tourmates some private sex photos he'd taken.

Wednesday, Oct. 15.
?Seattle to Portland

The RV can't be picked up until San Francisco, so the tour mates climb into a cramped, unmarked Econoline. It takes about two minutes before an ass is in the air and a challenge is raised to light the van's first fart. From then on, it's a battle of endurance as Otto and Romulo pit body odors in a viciously enclosed environment.

In fact, a van can be 10 times the sensorial surround-sound environment even the most dedicated audiophile could construct. As Otto drives the van — one hand on the wheel, one on a digital camera — iPods are exchanged and, drawn from the tangled lifelines running between laptops, shit goes gangsta to glitch. Amid this frantic exchange of software, MP3s and porn, three separate conversations take place, sometimes converging into one when a particularly compelling piece plays on the ADD jukebox. Outside the windows, rolling shadows of rounded crags wreathed by clouds stand in harsh contrast.

Devine probably doesn't even realize it, but he ticks, tapping nervously to the rhythm of whatever's playing. He'll mouth a particularly distinctive pattern, laugh at things at a lapsed pace. It's like his output can't keep up with his input.

The venue in Portland is Holocene, a former warehouse outfitted in minimalist chic. The crowd arrives at a trickle, while Devine sits at the merchandise table, worrying about making enough money off such a time-consuming venture. A kid who grew up with Devine's brother in Roswell comes by to say hi, but he's afraid to approach Devine, who's lost in thought in front of his PDA. But the kid gets the wrong idea. He sees a mecho-electro marvel, more than a man. What he's looking at, though, is just a sullen, homesick fellow.

But five minutes before Devine goes on, he starts getting jittery, as if his body senses it's about to ascend behind a monitor, its home away from home. Unfortunately, the assault is not what the past two shows have been. Despite the assumption that laptop music is automated, the lack of feedback from the crowd reflects on Devine, who comes across less frenetically.

Thursday, Oct. 16.
?Portland to San Francisco

Stoned in the van, everyone bobs in and out of their headspace as they hurtle down the freeway, mountains looming, rain whipping the windshield. Over the stereo, country iconoclast David Allan Coe sings, "Don't bite the dick that feeds you, honey!" and from the rear rises groans of disbelief as Max Hardcore porn plays on a laptop. It becomes apparent that it's not in dark warehouses or headphones that the mental process behind Devine's music makes most sense, it's here — baked and disoriented, with the sound of a gut-wrenching fuck in the background.

"I love uncomfortable situations ... anything that conjures up misunderstanding — things alien, not usually associated with the preferred human emotions ... I thrive on uncertainty," admits Devine, who packs extreme porn not for sexual pleasure (though there's porn packed for that as well) but seemingly as a test for those around. It's pretty repulsive, actually. But it forces a reaction, just as Schematic artists do in their quest to redefine electronic performance as something visceral.

Devine's music is like sex — the rhythms pummeling and rigorous, sweaty from friction, but also caressing the listener. Like Devine's taste in porn, his music is, at its base, "perverted." But perversion can lead to evolution.

Thursday, Oct. 16
?San Francisco

The van pulls up to the venue — switched only days before from a gay bar to 111 Minna, a downtown art gallery — at almost 11 p.m. Sound checks are scrapped. Schematic's stage is nestled in one corner, while local performing artists set up around the corner. With sound bleeding between, frustration and aggression results — two thematic undercurrents.

Naut Humon of Asphodel Records is in attendance. Humon's been active in experimental composition for over 20 years, but he's a fan of these post-Aphex Twin twentysomethings running a pot-fueled punk-rock tour. Indeed, technology, coupled with ingenuity, is a leveling factor.

Friday, Oct. 17
?Los Angeles

If the tour is a baby, the first five days have been the gestation. And at L.A.'s WhatClub? — an industrial, economy-sized private loft for art installations and such — the water breaks. Everyone performs with ferocity — suddenly everyone's spirits are lifted, a lot of worries now dissolved as everyone falls into natural roles.

Kay, the married man who often plays den mother, looks after affairs in the RV they picked up in San Francisco. Forte, the seen-it-before veteran with the tour's most introverted music, goes to stay with friends. Otto and Romulo challenge each other to stay up and ingest drugs. And Devine, well, he does a little of everything — drugging, file-trading, talking about software, pining for his girlfriend.

Devine, too exhausted to do the acid that's been burning a hole in his pocket, leaves a little before dawn to try to catch a little sleep. Maybe if he's lucky, he says, he'll also find time to masturbate. After all, past the ProTools talk and the international performances, Devine's just a guy.

But he's also the epitome of the developing laptop performance scene: At times social, at times insular. At times a sponge, elated, sometimes feeling wrung out, perturbed. At times badly in need of a shower. Cold and clinical? On occasion. But always very, very human.

tony.ware@creativeloafing.com