![]() But any sense of comfort vanishes as soon as Lynch opens his mouth. The most distinctive feature of Crazy Clown Time is Lynch's singing, which frees every song on the album from the musical genres that seem sort of, but not entirely, applicable: "modern blues," "rock," "ambient," even "dance." Listen to the first 10 seconds of every track, and the music style will seem familiar (a stripped-down Portishead often comes to mind). But while we recognize the speaker's voice, his vocabulary has changed. Most listeners will likely agree that the 14-track work is in character for Lynch. ![]() As with so many of Lynch's projects, the new record is predictably unpredictable, stamped with his odd, often grotesque, vision in a way that both confounds and inspires admiration. ![]() But Crazy Clown Time, which was recorded over a year at his own studio in Hollywood, is a distinctly solo effort (Dean Hurley, the manager of Asymmetrical Studio since 2005, served as the album's sound engineer). Certainly, the famously polymathic Lynch has considerable experience in this arena: He has produced the albums of wispy crooner Julee Cruise, collaborated with Danger Mouse on Dark Night of the Soul, and co-released the experimental rock album BlueBob. Lynch's solo debut album Crazy Clown Time, which comes out today, marks his most substantial foray into music beyond the big screen. "I love music for lots of reasons," Lynch said in a recent phone call from Paris, "but one real important reason is that many times, ideas will come out of music-ideas for different things, like cinema and painting." In fact, he and long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, the composer for numerous Lynch films, recorded the ominous theme song of Mulholland Drive before any scenes were even shot. The 65-year-old director of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, and a host of other cult favorites personally composes some of the songs for his scores during shooting, he often wears headphones playing music that "marries" the scene at hand and he has written entire scenes based upon a song. This is how David Lynch soundtracks work: not as an addition to the film, but rather as an inextricable part of it. After watching, it's difficult to hear the otherwise gentle track with innocent ears. At one point, the deranged character Frank Booth (played by the late Dennis Hopper) clenches his face in furious ecstasy as he listens to the love ballad, which later serves as the literal backdrop for an episode of his psychotic cruelty. The movie, directed by surrealist visionary David Lynch, injects the song with violent, even sadistic, power. Roy Orbison is said to have been taken aback by the use of his song "In Dreams" in the 1986 film Blue Velvet, and you can understand why.
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