David Lynch - The Big Dream (11/11/2013)
Dear David Lynch,
Oh, the bizarre evenings so many of us have spent with you, one-in-all transfixed on your contemporary surrealist classics. With their jaunty plots and characters too weird to truly exist or forget, you have built blue velvet inland empires on dunes littered with eraser-headed elephant men at the end of a lost highway off Mulholland drive on screens for three glorious decades as only you ever could. Stories and scenes that envelop consciousness and unconsciousness even handedly, becoming works of art that stand entirely and uncompromisingly on their own. Even that utterly nonsensical Playstation 2 commercial, and the YouTube clip where you get worked up damning those who watch movies on their iPhone were akin to brilliance.
It is well documented that you do almost all of the sound design on your films. It has worked for you to a most spectacular degree with your unique stories and iconic pictures to compliment the noise. Your lustrous and spectacular film and television career aside, it is hard to say whether or not your second foray in to music as a stand alone outlet with the underwhelmingly titled The Big Dream is an utterly brilliant and subversive trek in to your aural interpretation of reality, or a big load of utterly weird and boring shit. Can I get some help with this, please?
Regards,
Todd Gingell
Rather contrary to most reviews, I write this particular one still completely unsure if I know whether or not I’m listening to what will eventually be recognized as a slow, sprawling, post-whatever-electronica-blues classic from an artist at the top of his game, or a peculiar and unnecessary tidbit of pop-culture to be revered by those über-wank hipster types who feel the need to like that which others so justifiably abhor.
Perhaps I’m not brave enough to stomach being caught on the wrong side of history, or am yet to listen to album for nine years continuously while practicing tantric yoga on a medium-sized hill of block ice and blue cabbages somewhere in Teufelsberg, Berlin (as the ever-imaginative Mr. Lynch may very well have intended).
Like all modern art, The Big Dream may be irritating dross, or a true stroke of brilliance. Any self-respecting lynch fan should sift through it either way, for therein lies somewhat goofy, yet strangely poetic lyrics from the mouth of a man who is capable of things far more wonderful, terrifying, and glorious than most of us could ever conjure.
Musically the CD is simply produced, with Lynch doing so in his own studio he specifically had built for “experimentation”. Synthetic instruments doing most of the work under a gloomy electric guitar wandering about like so many Twin Peaks opening credit rolls, Lynch’s trademark vocal twang is heavily reverberated throughout, which upon first listen – much like the entire album - I found unbearable, but eventually got used to. Perhaps you will too, but if for whatever reason you don’t, then light up a massive spliff, watch Blue Velvet, and give the CD another bash. You may just fall a little bit in love with it.
Best of luck figuring out Mr. Lynch’s latest artistic endeavour, it’s one of a kind either way, and for that I ultimately must commend it.
Todd Gingell
Oh, the bizarre evenings so many of us have spent with you, one-in-all transfixed on your contemporary surrealist classics. With their jaunty plots and characters too weird to truly exist or forget, you have built blue velvet inland empires on dunes littered with eraser-headed elephant men at the end of a lost highway off Mulholland drive on screens for three glorious decades as only you ever could. Stories and scenes that envelop consciousness and unconsciousness even handedly, becoming works of art that stand entirely and uncompromisingly on their own. Even that utterly nonsensical Playstation 2 commercial, and the YouTube clip where you get worked up damning those who watch movies on their iPhone were akin to brilliance.
It is well documented that you do almost all of the sound design on your films. It has worked for you to a most spectacular degree with your unique stories and iconic pictures to compliment the noise. Your lustrous and spectacular film and television career aside, it is hard to say whether or not your second foray in to music as a stand alone outlet with the underwhelmingly titled The Big Dream is an utterly brilliant and subversive trek in to your aural interpretation of reality, or a big load of utterly weird and boring shit. Can I get some help with this, please?
Regards,
Todd Gingell
Rather contrary to most reviews, I write this particular one still completely unsure if I know whether or not I’m listening to what will eventually be recognized as a slow, sprawling, post-whatever-electronica-blues classic from an artist at the top of his game, or a peculiar and unnecessary tidbit of pop-culture to be revered by those über-wank hipster types who feel the need to like that which others so justifiably abhor.
Perhaps I’m not brave enough to stomach being caught on the wrong side of history, or am yet to listen to album for nine years continuously while practicing tantric yoga on a medium-sized hill of block ice and blue cabbages somewhere in Teufelsberg, Berlin (as the ever-imaginative Mr. Lynch may very well have intended).
Like all modern art, The Big Dream may be irritating dross, or a true stroke of brilliance. Any self-respecting lynch fan should sift through it either way, for therein lies somewhat goofy, yet strangely poetic lyrics from the mouth of a man who is capable of things far more wonderful, terrifying, and glorious than most of us could ever conjure.
Musically the CD is simply produced, with Lynch doing so in his own studio he specifically had built for “experimentation”. Synthetic instruments doing most of the work under a gloomy electric guitar wandering about like so many Twin Peaks opening credit rolls, Lynch’s trademark vocal twang is heavily reverberated throughout, which upon first listen – much like the entire album - I found unbearable, but eventually got used to. Perhaps you will too, but if for whatever reason you don’t, then light up a massive spliff, watch Blue Velvet, and give the CD another bash. You may just fall a little bit in love with it.
Best of luck figuring out Mr. Lynch’s latest artistic endeavour, it’s one of a kind either way, and for that I ultimately must commend it.
Todd Gingell