VA – The Eraserhead – Music Inspired by the Film of David Lynch – Unexplained Sounds Group
In the cult cosmos of David Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’, silence drips like oil, and the industrial groan of existence becomes its own character. The original soundtrack – the brainchild of Lynch and Alan Splet – wasn’t just music. It was dread and confusion made flesh. Atmosphere you could taste. Sonic sludge dredged from some ancient subconscious. With its ghostly rumbles, buzzing electricity, the eerie hush between mechanical sighs, and the gloopy strides of Fats Waller, it evoked both the timeless and the primordial, like monks humming as clouds of moths bash against a lightbulb.
Unexplained Sounds Group hasn’t simply assembled artists to remix nostalgia. They were offering an opportunity to lay objects at the altar; to delve back into a nightmare powered by steam and see what the second quarter of the 21st century makes of it. For those who carry Lynch’s film in their bones, hearing new interpretations can be jarring, even sacrilegious. It’s like the never-ending churn of ‘new’ cover art for old films released on Blu-Ray – unnecessary faffing with beautiful artwork which has become integral to the film. But it can also be revelatory. These artists aren’t trying to replicate Lynch’s sonic shadows; they’re conversing with them. Challenging them. Treating the original score not as sacred scripture but as haunted architecture.
Listening to this compilation while mentally wandering through ‘Eraserhead’s nightmarish corridors feels like applying alternate timelines to your own memories. The pieces here don’t try to mimic the iconic sound design. Grey Frequency‘s dripping, caverous whale’s heart opener ”Lapelle’s Factory’ sets the tone, though in no way demands others follow the same route. The fizzing static and groaning mechanics of Adi Newton‘s (Clock DVA) ‘Contra Ciel II’ hints at science fiction but still roots you in Henry’s doomed world. Likewise with Ouby‘s ‘Meta Video Dub’ – driven by what sounds like a demonic grandfather clock, it offers no respite, only the sound of chromium locusts and a disembodied, heartless voice.
Richard Bégin offers ‘The Factory that Makes Erasers’ dives into the biology of the looming factory, oil flowing where blood should be; steam seeping out of lung-like bellows. Sonologyst takes on the responsibility of ‘The Silent Dinner’ – not in silence, of course, but with the existential dread that comes with imaging what others are thinking, curdled electronics fighting to make sense of what isn’t being said. Kabra‘s ‘Behind the Scenes’ leads us through a wind tunnel, which suggests some respite at the end, but in fact takes us further away from reality and into the depths of something inescapable but definitely alive.
Mario Lina Stancati‘s ‘Man in the Planet’ takes Henry further into the dark, with hammered pipes adding to his torment. Of course, this leads us into the most celebrated part of Lynch’s own soundtrack, ‘Lady in the Radiator, here reimagined as ‘The Lady’s Radiator’ by Mark Hjorthoy. Only the most distant of echoes still survive, and there’s no suggestion that everything is fine in heaven or anywhere else. Wahn‘s ‘Labyrinth Man’ layers on the horror even further, delving into ‘Hellraiser’ territory, a Cenobite-friendly wasteland of chains and magnesium lighting. Macgrogamma and ‘Thermal Subconscious’ offers a ray of hope amongst the chiselling, though this doesn’t last, as Bruno Dorella‘s ‘Radiator Folies’ make it abundantly clear that the phrase ‘bleeding the radiator’ is a little too on the nose. We end with 400 Things‘ ‘Beautiful Hearse’ that reanimates the Fats Waller organ of the original and gives it spindly legs. Nikos Sotirelis rounds things up with ‘Metamorphosis’, which offers some relief, if no resolution.
Where Lynch and Splet conjured dread through electrical hums and industrial whispers, these artists channel it through digital decay, electro-acoustic abrasion, and slow-motion implosions. The emotional palette is preserved, but retranslated. It’s like listening to someone’s dream of your dream. That echoing divergence creates a tension that’s artistically fruitful, both a mirror and a refracted lens.
There’s a subtle tribute to the film’s strange serenity, too. Think of the ‘Lady in the Radiator’ – her innocent, warped smile, the lopsided comfort of her song. “In Heaven, everything is fine,” she sings, offering a kind of uncanny mercy. This compilation doesn’t quote her directly, but her spectral spirit pulses beneath the surface. The tracks flirt with soothing tones only to twist them into dissonance. They invite you in and then rearrange the furniture while your back is turned.
It’s in this collision – of love for the original and the audacity to reinterpret it – that the project finds its pulse. To apply new music to a film so deeply etched into the psyche feels strange, even presumptuous. But it also opens up fresh chambers in the imagination. What if ‘Eraserhead’ emerged in a digital age, its bleakness filtered through feedback loops and AI hallucinations? What would its anxiety sound like today?
This compilation offers no definitive answers. Instead, it provokes, disturbs, and honours the original by refusing to worship it. It takes that iconic sonic mythology and asks, “What else could it be?” The result is unsettling, poetic, and – in the most Lynchian way possible – beautifully unresolved.
Daz Lawrence
