Lynch Mob

Ever since seeing Eraserhead on TV at a tender age, I've been following (and often enjoying) the work of David Lynch. Actually, my fascination pre-dates even my first viewing of his films-- just seeing the box of the Eraserhead VHS was creepily seductive. In recent years, however, his experiments with digital video have left me a little cold. Inland Empire, for example, has sat on my shelves, unwatched, for over two years. So, I was a little hesitant about seeing The Air Is On Fire, a solo Lynch retrospective, recently. But I took the plunge, and I'm glad I did. Much of his artwork (paintings, noise machines, sculptures, manipulated photos) displayed the requisite eerieness even as they rehashed familiar themes and tropes. But the room full of doodles on napkins, matchbooks and scraps of paper, collated over 25 years, was a real insight into the guy's mind, and the cinema showing a continuous three-hour compilation of shorts was revelatory. The Grandmother, in particular, holds up really well as a pre-cursor of many Lynch obsessions, and was better than I remembered from my first viewing 20 years ago.

Spookily, having seen the show on Saturday, I turned on the radio on a snowy day in Scotland two days later to hear that Lynch has just released two (!) singles. Though his interest in sound is obvious (cf. his production of Julee Cruise's Into The Night, as well as his curating and production of Industrial Symphony no.1 and his collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti and Alan Splet) this is his first foray into music as a solo performer (he did a little vocal take on the Dark Night of the Soul project earlier this year). The first, Good Day Today, is fairly weak, like an Underworld out-take. However, the other one, I Know, is not bad. Nice Vaughn Oliver artwork too, but don't give up the day job(s), David.

Here's a little Playstation ad I found, directed by Lynch.



And, as we mentioned Angelo Badalamenti, how about some Blue Velvet soundtrack to download?

Download Mysteries of Love by Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch (Julee Cruise version) mp3