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Baker's Dozen

Really Heavy Things: Devin Townsend's Favourite Albums
Toby Cook , December 18th, 2012 13:18

…well, apart from Enya. The Strapping Young Lad man offers up his top albums

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Enya – Watermark
In my life I think I’ve probably bough six copies of that record; I fucking love that record. And in fact, when I first heard ‘Orinoco Flow’ on the radio I remember thinking that it sounded so different from anything else – it’s like a women's, new age-y choir, and the amount of echo and reverb; I was like, "I want metal that sounds like Enya", and I think I’ve spent most of my career working towards that end!

The rest of Enya’s back catalogue, like Shepherd Moon and all that, it lost any sort of darkness, it was just this fluffy, getting your toenails painted type music – Watermark is awesome, and the song ‘Exile’ in particular, as a horny, 15 year old kid with some sort of strange Irish background; I was just like "take me away Enya, take me to your shores". I loved Enya and I still do man, I think that record is fucking awesome. On a personal level, I never actually though her voice was that good I just think that it’s the way that they produced it – it’s just walls and walls of Enya. If you listen to everything that I’ve done there’s like 42 of me on any given track and all that came from the Enya stuff – ‘Orinoco Flow’, ‘Storms In Africa’ and all those songs from there, it’s that sound of like a big, celestial sounding human voice that I took a huge influence from.