David Lynch releases Crazy Clown Time

Today, David Lynch is pleased to release his debut solo record, Crazy Clown Time on Sunday Best Recordings /[PIAS] America. A sampler of the album is streaming at Youtube — listen to the collection of tracks here.With the release of his first solo musical project, Crazy Clown Time, David Lynch marks a departure from his revered and influential musical collaborations in the past with Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks), Polish pianist Marek Zebrowski (Inland Empire), and Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse (Dark Night of the Soul).

Recorded over a year at his own studio with engineer Dean Hurley (who also contributes guitar and drums), Crazy Clown Time unveils a majestic, yet powerfully idiosyncratic vision of “modern blues” that could only be drawn from the mind of David Lynch. Filled with foreboding soundscapes, hypnotic rhythms and enigmatic lyrics, this is music that will resonate not only with fans of Lynch’s films, but also to listeners who appreciate daring, experimental music.


Listeners may have caught the potent one-two punch of “Good Day Today” and “I Know” towards the end of last year, but those tracks only hint at what’s in store on the album, as it twists and turns and detours in all manner of strange and unpredictable directions, taking in tales of doomed romance and dark revenge. For starters, kicking things off in raucous, deliciously twisted fashion is his collaboration with Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the thrumming, pummeling, punk-tinged head trip that
is “Pinky’s Dream,” which Lynch himself aptly describes as “the horror and sadness of losing someone to other dimensions.” 


From then on, the record opens up to include everything from the low-ended, brutal beauty of “Football Game”, to the sparse yet claustrophobic menace of “Speed Roadster” (where Lynch sings, “I guess you’d say that I’m stalkin’ you/ I might be stalkin’ you baby…maybe you’re happy/ but I hope you’re sad”), to the dance-driven, pounding, 7 minute epic that is “Strange and Unproductive Thinking”. The record however, closes on a note of sheer transcendent beauty on the moving “She Rise Up”, with Lynch’s wrenching lyrics of loss and redemption adrift in an amniotic haze of beats and shimmering synths, as if suspended in mid-air. It’s a breathtaking finale, and brings to a thrilling close one of the most singular albums you’re likely to hear all year. The fact that Lynch has somehow managed to seamlessly traverse these different genres on his musical debut, while still sounding, very recognizably, like nobody else, is a testament to his unique and unmistakable vision.