On October 27th, 2012 DEVIN TOWNSEND played the grandest show of his illustrious career at the Roundhouse Tapes in London, UK. Christened the Retinal Circus, it was a show that presented the biggest musical exhibition anyone has ever seen in th ecourse of Townsend's career. Andrew Bansal at Metal Assault recently caught up with Townsend to discuss the venture. An excerpt is available below:

Q: What was that experience like, doing that show in London?

Devin: "It was basically every emotion sort of wrapped up into one. Being perfectly honest, overall it was a really good experience but it was fraught with technical hurdles and I didn’t actually recognize what we had done until I started editing it. In hindsight, it’s great but at that time it was just a lot of stress."

Q: What kind of technical problems did you face?

Devin: "Well, the ideas that I typically have for Retinal Circus or Ziltoid or any number of projects that I do are usually on such a scope that there’s no feasible way you can do it with the amount of money and time that we usually have. Retinal was an extreme version of that. There were a 100 people in our performing group, we had a day-and-a-half worth of rehearsal, and overall, we did achieve what I had hoped to achieve from the show, but to get it to that point it was chaos. You can imagine when there are a 100 people including circus performers, choir members and people that had no connection to what I’ve done or to the music itself. They had to become familiar with the music and being on our stage, and all these things that went into this 3-hour performance. We had props, we were playing songs we’d never played before, and I think there were 50 or 60 wireless units going. Something as simple as trying to find the frequencies for the wireless units became a challenge when we had to go and do it amidst the chaos of pulling off something that was so bizarre. For me on a personal level, narcissistic to the point of nausea, it was a heck of a thing! But ultimately, for me it was a success. I tend to be hyper-aware of what I do and what it is that I project into the audience, I real awkward sort of quasi-nerdy thing. So by doing Retinal which was so awkward and so nerdy, it allowed me to kind of liberate that. It’s what people are going to say now, like, ‘Ok, you’re an awkward and nerdy performer!’ And I’m like, ‘Fuck yeah, of course! Look at this.’ I’m not only doing a show that’s incredibly awkward and nerdy, but we put flames on it and a pop-up book in the release. I mean, fuck you, right?"

Go to this location for the complete interview.

The Retinal Circus CD/DVD will be released on October 29th in North America via InsideOut Music (Sepember 30th in Europe).

Retinal Circus is now available to pre-order from the official Devin Townsend store. The deluxe Die Hard box set includes an exclusive signed litho print and limited to 500 copies only and won't be available anywhere else. There is also a Limited Edition version, BluRay, DVD and CD. Also, with each variation there is an option to purchase one of the official event shirts from the show. Click this link to go to the pre-order page.

The complete list of formats is below:

- Standard 2-Disc DVD
- Standard 1-Disc Blu-Ray
- Standard 2-CD Audio
- Special Edition 2-DVD/1-Blu Ray/2-CD Box Set
- Diehard Deluxe Fan Box incl. 2-DVD/1-Blu Ray/2-CD

Below is a clip for the track ‘Grace’, with the band joined by frequent collaborator ANNEKE VAN GIERSBERGEN (ex-THE GATHERING).