Biography
Richard Devine has crafted some of the most intricate and technically sophisticated works to emerge from the techno and IDM worlds. Drawing from musique concrète, industrial, electro, and hip-hop sources, his productions frequently deliver dense, immersive results, spanning the hallucinatory cinematic soundscapes heard on 2001’s Aleamapper through the breakcore-esque organized chaos that defines 2005’s Cautella. Although celebrated during the 2000s for expanding the possibilities of digital signal processing while composing and performing across multiple laptops at once, Devine devoted much of the following decade to assembling an enormous modular synthesizer rig that ultimately yielded the 2018 album Sort\Lave. Beyond his solo output, the Atlanta-based producer has built a thriving parallel vocation in sound design, supplying patches for instruments and software from Moog, Korg, and Native Instruments while contributing extensively to film scores, advertising, and product audio.
Classically trained on piano and guitar, Devine first explored electronic music with both computers and analog synthesizers during high school. His debut, the 1995 triple 12" Sculpt, consisted entirely of hard-hitting techno tracks. The next year he issued the Polymorphic EP on Six Sixty Six Limited, a subsidiary of the influential Midwest hardcore techno label Drop Bass Network, and also appeared on a split 12" with the deep house act Wamdue Kids. His approach shifted sharply with the 1997 Richard Coleman Devine EP, an angular, distorted electro-techno release on Miami’s Schematic label. After remixing East Flatbush Project and Phoenecia, Devine gained wider recognition when his version of Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” was included on the 1999 Warp 10+3 Remixes compilation; one year later, Lipswitch was jointly issued by Warp and Schematic.
He maintained ties to Schematic compilations while issuing further albums, including the 2001 musique concrète-inspired Aleamapper and the more rhythmic Asect:Dsect in 2003. His most intense recording yet, Cautella, surfaced on the short-lived but prolific Canadian imprint Sublight in 2005 and was followed by the Sigstop EP. The 2008 split Divine Edgar with Jimmy Edgar appeared on Detroit Underground, which later released the full-length Risp in 2012. After an extended period focused on sound design and modular-system development, Devine resurfaced in 2018 with Sort\Lave—his first album composed entirely on modular synthesizers—via Timesig, the label operated by fellow modular enthusiast Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares).
Classically trained on piano and guitar, Devine first explored electronic music with both computers and analog synthesizers during high school. His debut, the 1995 triple 12" Sculpt, consisted entirely of hard-hitting techno tracks. The next year he issued the Polymorphic EP on Six Sixty Six Limited, a subsidiary of the influential Midwest hardcore techno label Drop Bass Network, and also appeared on a split 12" with the deep house act Wamdue Kids. His approach shifted sharply with the 1997 Richard Coleman Devine EP, an angular, distorted electro-techno release on Miami’s Schematic label. After remixing East Flatbush Project and Phoenecia, Devine gained wider recognition when his version of Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” was included on the 1999 Warp 10+3 Remixes compilation; one year later, Lipswitch was jointly issued by Warp and Schematic.
He maintained ties to Schematic compilations while issuing further albums, including the 2001 musique concrète-inspired Aleamapper and the more rhythmic Asect:Dsect in 2003. His most intense recording yet, Cautella, surfaced on the short-lived but prolific Canadian imprint Sublight in 2005 and was followed by the Sigstop EP. The 2008 split Divine Edgar with Jimmy Edgar appeared on Detroit Underground, which later released the full-length Risp in 2012. After an extended period focused on sound design and modular-system development, Devine resurfaced in 2018 with Sort\Lave—his first album composed entirely on modular synthesizers—via Timesig, the label operated by fellow modular enthusiast Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares).
Albums
Singles
