Eraserhead: Original Soundtrack Recording (2012)

A two-sided oddity to remind us just how strange Eraserhead was in 1977. In 2012, Sacred Bones put out a vinyl edition of what amounts to a sound design score for the film, credited to David Lynch & sound designer Alan R. Splet. Side A (according to the streamable version) is 20:08 of wind, clack, bubbling, metallic whorls, train call, indefineable hiss, faint chamber orchestration and organ grinder interludes, thunder rumble, dog barks, broken glass, crackling electricity, and the sort of ambient machinic static that Lynch would pull through Twin Peaks: The Return at the other side of his career. It also includes snippets of deliciously flat dialogue that begin, Are you Henry? Side B runs 18:22 and includes the sole musical composition, “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” (famously covered by The Pixies). It’s a lot more gripping than it should be, and fails to do what Eno said ambient music should: It won’t allow you to ignore it. Rather than sink into the background, it steps forward to meet you, and asks: Did you and Mary have sexual intercourse? The arrival of the crying, coughing abomination in the last five minutes of side one is a riveting event. They’re still not sure it is a baby! Those of us who are mourning Lynch’s passing can find some solace in Eraserhead: Original Soundtrack Recording, which is there to remind us of how Lynch changed the world by changing our hearts, minds, eyes, and ears.It’s probably the mostly quotable experimental soundtrack you’ll ever hear. Henry says it best: Oh, you are sick! 5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—J †Johnson

You can read more of JJ’s writing on the audio-visual multimedia art of David Lynch in their forthcoming book, Janky Materiality: Artifice & Interface (Spring 2025), and in Trouble Songs: A Musicological Poetics (2018), from punctum books.