Send "David Lynch " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 If you've ever thought of director David Lynch as being "weird," suspend that thought for a moment. That weirdness-- the visceral, surrealistic imagery and fragmented plots in his movies-- is exactly what we as viewers want from him. You probably like it weird now and then. I do too. It's what thrills us, confuses us, and keeps us coming back for more.One of the elements that defines Lynch's films is the way he uses music, especially music from the 1950s and early 60s. Seemingly innocuous songs are set in relief against scenes of violence or desperation in ways that reveal some latent passion that might be hard to hear on oldies radio. The era is crucial: Slowdances and big-bad-wolf blues are styles whose tensions are born of repression. Making your sexual desires known was not much of an option in the 1950s, so the music worked via metaphor and concealment and, as a result, quaked with subterranean energy that had no safe outlet. Lynch's scenes provide that outlet. When he uses a song as soundtrack, he transforms it. Music in his movies arrives at high-water moments. Dennis Hopper does himself up in lipstick to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" before assaulting poor Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet, Naomi Watts and Laura Harring sob to Rebekah del Rio's performance of Orbison's "Crying" in Mulholland Drive, and Jack Nance, saddled with his horrible alien baby at the edge of domestic sanity in Eraserhead, is serenaded by a tiny, grotesque woman inside his radiator. In these scenes, the music is used in the same way that we as listeners often use it: to pump ourselves up, to give us space to emote, or to find solace. Lynch's sense of music is intuitive that way, and probably one of the most plainly sympathetic aspects of his movies....full text |
| Prettymuchamazing |
| I had no idea David Lynch was David Fucking Lynch. It’s one of those names you hear tossed around by hipsters at a bodega or someone who starts pontificating about “this guy” while he’s coming down off a midnight bender. This guy has among a million other things: helped score arguably one of the most poignant intros to a network show ever (sorry Jan Hammer), raised over a million dollars and counting for a “7 billion dollar” Transcendental Meditation Center and directed Dune which didn’t supplement Sting’s income a whole lot. All anyone can say is “Well,damn…”. In short, Lynch is an expressionistic tour de force. A post-modern Renaissance man who has built a career around tapping into the collective subconscious with remarkable precision. Of course his first solo album is called Crazy Clown Time right? Then again, this shouldn’t be all too shocking considering 1977’s Eraserhead started a cult following on the midnight B-movie circuit. Serious content with ridiculous titles. Or is it all one giant illusion? No one will ever know the machinations of his enigmatic mind and best we keep it that way. Watching the featurette on the making of This Train, the album he produced and wrote with talented lolita Chrysta Bell, you get a small inkling of how strangely efficient his brain really is. She says he creates “beds of music” which serve as aural mattresses for her to slowly sink into. I imagine similar methods were employed for Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to assume the role of a tortured specter on opening track “Pinky’s Dream”. The high notes she hits are eerily reminiscent of Pylon’s Vanessa Briscoe Hay on “Cool”. Lynch’s meticulous, crystalline sound design rears its chilling head on “Noah’s Ark”. Following a wash of hazy synths, a clearly delineated metronome begins clicking away. It’s buttressed by a groovy as hell bass line running parallel at half-tempo. It’s elemental on every level. Repetition becomes exhilarating. Sound is followed, not cornered and trapped. Midway through a clip of soft showers drizzles on the syncopated line “It’s the song/of love” which is nearly impossible to remove from your head on any dreary fall day....full text |
| Obscuresound |
| Expectations for David Lynch’s first album revolve around two reference points. The most glaring is to his idiosyncratic work as a filmmaker. It is expected that Crazy Clown Time will contain the darkness and mystique of films like Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, but the actual stylistic direction of the music is a different question. Although the scores in his films are handled largely by someone else – Krzysztof Penderecki and, most frequently, Angelo Badalamenti – Lynch has more involvement in their craft than most directors. His participation extends beyond simply chronological placement. One of the greatest table-setters of brooding ambience in cinematic history, Lynch aids the songwriting process as well as the production. His most recent film, 2007’s Inland Empire, is a full assertion of his growing interest in solo musical work. Aided by Penderecki, two songs from the film – “Ghost of Love” and “Walkin’ on the Sky” – are practically Lynch solo efforts. They also revealed his singing voice for the first time (or in the case of “Walkin’ on the Sky”, his distorted murmurs). Taking the musical content from Inland Empire or Twin Peaks is one appropriate reference point when attempting to surmise what Crazy Clown Time sounds like. The other is a less travelled path: his actual previous work as a solo musician – namely the basic electro-pop efforts “Good Day Today” and “I Know“. “Good Day Today” is a generic electro-pop effort with grimy house effects and vocal pitch distortion, while “I Know” is a more enjoyable and atmospheric work that is better representative of Crazy Clown Time. Knowing the idiosyncratic tendencies of Lynch’s films, many expected more innovation and left-field characteristics than “Good Day Today”. The tracks on Crazy Clown Time, while less accessible and occasionally duller, are noticeably more adventurous and dependent on ambience, like “I Know”. The knowledge he acquired from producing “Good Day Today” and “I Know” is applied wisely here; there are still bits of engaging electro-pop, but they lack the straightforwardness and novelty feel of his past forays in the style. For some this makes his music even more difficult to listen to. For others – namely the many admirers of the sound components in his films – it sounds like a very helpful component in defining precisely what “Lynchian” means....full text |
David Lynch lyrics
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