Five ways David Lynch made his mark on electronic music

From horror to crime drama to romance; Lynchian filmmaking is signified by its marrying together of the ominous and dream-like. While all may not have co-existed simultaneously within his work, David Lynch’s world was often one of glistening Americana, surreal optimism and otherworldly unease. Though his own music tastes, and the genres he platformed and explored, are less easy to categorise — having demonstrated an eclectic taste across his career that never really sat in one bracket. A connoisseur of alternative rock and electronic in equal measure, he was known to be a fan of Björk, David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix, Depeche Mode and Bob Dylan; in 2022, seminal experimental duo Autechre revealed that he had asked them “via a handwritten letter” to play at a fundraiser for his David Lynch Foundation, his charity that focuses on the benefits of transcendental meditation.

While he consistently worked with a wide-range of musicians to create music for his films, such as enlisting Toto to create the soundtrack for Dune and his regular collaborations with composer Angelo Badalamenti — he would often platform experimental artists such as The KLF, Chromatics and Devo. The Lynch-verse was so intricately connected to the buoyant world of experimental music that Hudson Mohawke was invited to perform his track ‘Human’ at The Bang Bang Bar as part of a cameo on Twin Peaks: The Return, in the same episode as indie pop band Au Revoir Simone and Sky Ferreira, while other episodes included performances from industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails and electronic-pop outfit Chromatics.

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Perhaps as the ultimate prop, he also leant his skills to creating a number of music videos for some of his favourite musicians, most of whom had featured within his on-screen work. In 1995 he created the visual for ‘Rammstein’ by the German NDH band of the same name, going on to craft a video for Moby’s ‘Shot In The Back of the Head’, Nine Inch Nails ‘Came Back Haunted’ and more. In a 2017 interview with Pitchfork, Lynch said that there were “so many millions of songs and bands” that he wanted to collaborate with in his work, and he did so until the very end – championing musicians from all over the world.