David Lynch’s dance music – If he wasn’t famous would you care?

Making the leap last year from film to dance music with the release of the single Good Day Today on British DJ Rob da Bank‘s label Sunday Best, legendary film maker David Lynch has recently finished work on his debut album, whose title has yet to be released. While interesting from a music and cultural standpoint, the best part about this in my mind is that music writers around the world are going to have to avoid calling music Lynchian without running the danger of someone thinking they’re talking about tasty vocoder hooks.

Despite still only taking his first fledgling steps into the world of dance music production though, in true music industry style fame has been acknowledged to transfer intellectual validity across disciplines, and Lynch is scheduled to be giving the keynote address at dance music event the International Music Summit in Ibiza. Don’t expect to see him behind the decks though, as Lynch and his engineer “Big” Dean Hurley, will be giving the address via skype from Lynch’s studio in L.A. The press release states that Lynch and Hurley plan to “show us exactly how they made the music and how they turn it out in Lynch’s studio.”

Not having heard the album yet, so not to prematurely discount it in any way, I can’t exactly write this off from the get go, but listening to Good Day Today one can only feel a certain sense of disappointment that an artist in whom so many people have placed so much respect is wasting his time putting out unremarkable middle of the road dance music that is unlikely to excite any but the most blind sycophants.

In the ‘arts’ community, Lynch is seen as somewhat of a golden child by some, a man who can do no wrong. I won’t be surprised to see certain critics heap praise on this release for being ‘restrained’ or an ‘exercise in subtlety’ that ‘ever so slightly redefines dance music,’ or some other nonsense you could write without hearing it.

For some reason when it comes to art, people are often afraid to tell artists to stick to what they’re good at. It sort of makes me think about when Michael Jordan decided to try his hand at baseball, and I can understand why someone who has experienced so much success in one field would want to branch out into a new one and try something different, what seems ridiculous to me is that no one is commenting on the fact that, just like Jordan at the plate, this album promises to be mediocre, that if Lynch wasn’t famous, would anyone care. Angelo Badalamenti for life.

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