Xiu Xiu Reimagines Eraserhead’s Sonic Universe

Transmission 236: Interview with Xiu Xiu, Eraserhead

Xiu Xiu are set to perform a live score to David Lynch’s Eraserhead, touring European venues in late 2025. Jamie Stewart’s ensemble previously engaged with Lynch’s work during their extensive Twin Peaks performances, retired in 2018. Following Lynch’s recent death, however, they chose not to revisit Badalamenti’s iconic melodies, instead shifting toward the abrasive minimalism of Lynch and Alan Splet’s original industrial soundtrack.

Title: Eraserhead X
Artist: Xiu Xiu
Genres: Art Rock, Avant-garde, Drone, Experimental Music, Industrial Music, Noise Rock
Description: Jamie Stewart interview: The Xiu Xiu frontman on live scoring David Lynch’s Eraserhead and capturing industrial horror.

Unlike the melodic undertones of their previous interpretations, Eraserhead offers an abstract landscape of mechanical noise, sparse musical fragments, and unsettling electronic atmospherics. Xiu Xiu plan an original response to this sonic environment, incorporating fresh visual elements described by the group as extending the universe established by Lynch’s debut.

Related articles: Interview with Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart

How did the idea to reinterpret Eraserhead emerge, and what drew you specifically to this film?

Well, in 2015, 2016, and 2017, we had been touring and did a record of the music of Twin Peaks, and to our surprise it went relatively well by our standards. David Lynch’s work, and particularly Twin Peaks, is extraordinarily important to the cosmology and formation of Xiu Xiu. It seemed like people were still interested in us doing it, but we didn’t want to turn into this Las Vegas thing that we just exploited for eternity. So we put that to sleep and moved on to other things.

When David Lynch died, we started getting several requests to do the Twin Peaks music again. We thought about it, and for the same reasons, we didn’t want to do it again. We just didn’t want to overly insert ourselves into a set of music that had been so important to us. We didn’t want to diminish its importance by overdoing it.

At the same time, David Lynch remains incredibly important to us, and we wanted to think of a way to honor his passing and his influence. So we had the idea of interpreting the universe of Eraserhead. It seemed sonically the furthest away from all the other David Lynch work.

It’s the most experimental, the most far out, the most minimalistic. It’s as miraculous and wonderful as the music of Twin Peaks, but in a completely different way. It wouldn’t really make sense for us to do the music of Mulholland Drive or any of the other works.

Those all exist within a more traditional harmonic orchestral soundtrack milieu, whereas the soundtrack and sonic universe of Eraserhead is completely different. But it still feels connected to them somehow.

What aspects of Alan Splet’s sound design or Lynch’s sonic vision did you find most compelling—or most challenging—to reimagine?

Well, all of it is challenging. We’re still trying to figure out a way. I mean, we still have a lot of work to do.

We said yes to several concerts without actually having done anything. After we said yes, we realized, oh God, we actually have to figure out a way to do this. As far as it being compelling—although very little is going on—it’s extraordinarily, with rare exceptions, especially for David Lynch’s work, which a lot of times is incredibly dense sonically and incredibly loud.

A lot of times in Eraserhead, there’s almost nothing going on. There’s just some sort of electronic wind sound or some kind of industrial sounds, maybe two different layers. But somehow, even though it’s so minimal and so spare, it is extraordinarily evocative.

Similarly to Twin Peaks—which has such a specific aesthetic—you could hear three seconds of any music from Twin Peaks and immediately know it’s from Twin Peaks. Eraserhead is the exact same. You could hear three seconds from it, and if you knew it was a movie soundtrack and not just what your elevator sounds like, you’d go, oh, that’s very definitely from Eraserhead.

The emotional imprint, the aesthetic imprint, and the narrative imprint are incredibly strong, even though it’s so minimalistic. To us, that seems like a fairly extraordinary artistic accomplishment.

Was there any particular scene or sonic motif in Eraserhead that you felt needed to be radically transformed rather than preserved?

It’s not so much that we’re trying to transform the soundtrack or improve it. It’s a little different from how we approached Twin Peaks. With Twin Peaks, we played the songs from beginning to end as they were written, but Xiu Xiu has a particular sound.

We played them as Xiu Xiu would play them, even though we didn’t change the words, harmonies, or melodies. We changed the sonic palette because we have a different sonic palette. And we obviously changed how the singing was approached.

As hard as I might try, I could never sing like Julee CruiseBut with Eraserhead—and this might sound a bit ridiculous—we’re approaching it by imagining a version lasting five hours, extending far beyond its original hour-and-a-half duration and expanding its universe. And there were many, many other sounds that were similar to the ones that existed in the movie and related to the ones that exist in the movie.

But because there’s so much more to the story, other sounds would need to be created. And we’re making a short video also that’s approached in a similar way. It’s not going to have any footage of Eraserhead, obviously.

But what if there were other things that happened in Eraserhead? What might those look like? So if Eraserhead is this planet, what if the planet of Eraserhead was surrounded by asteroids and debris?

It’s still from the planet of Eraserhead and related to it, but it’s different from the planet of Eraserhead. So we’re trying to turn the visuals and sounds of Eraserhead—and this sounds very stupid, I’m sorry—we’re kind of, we’re the asteroids and not the planet so much.

Were there specific industrial or musique concrète techniques that felt essential to capturing the original tension of the film?

Yeah, there’s a couple in particular that we’re—actually more than a couple, probably three or four—that we’re using but jumping off from. The electronic wind sounds we’re using, I mean, I don’t know how they made theirs, but we’re making our own. There are a number of train recordings, and those seem really essential.

I think if we didn’t use any recordings of trains—even though we’re changing and modifying them—it would be too far away, it wouldn’t make sense. So we’re using some of those. There are some elevator sounds that we’re using. But then we’ve also done a massive amount of field recordings of a lot of older machines. In Eraserhead, there are a lot of corporeal, squishing sounds—we’ve done a number of those.

You know, a lot of sounds of things that should not be rubbed together physically, that are being rubbed together. And there’s not so much of this in the original, but we really expanded on the idea of making the baby sounds even more horrifying. There’s an aspect of the film that’s very much about sex and the darkness of sex.

The baby is made through sex. The central character, Henry, has an affair with his neighbor—a very bizarre sexual encounter in a jacuzzi filled with milk. Mary’s mother physically assaults—sexually assaults to a small degree—Henry in their house.

So we’re playing around a lot with that darkness, and pushing the dark sexuality, using some darkly sexual sounds. Even though it’s a big part of the narrative of the movie, it doesn’t seem to be emphasized much when people discuss it.

What role does improvisation play in this live score, if any?

To a certain degree. We’re still working on the score, and we’ve talked about how we’ll improvise quite a bit, actually. There are going to be sections with a predetermined sonic palette.

But how we use that sonic palette within a particular section will be relatively improvised. So, let’s say in section one, there’ll be five different sounds that we’re allowed to make—we’ll play around with how those sounds get made.

As the next section melds into that one, the timbres themselves probably won’t be improvised, but how they happen—there will probably be a fair amount of improvisation there.

Were there any non-musical texts—psychoanalytic, aesthetic, or philosophical—that influenced your approach to this project?

Oh, yeah, actually. My bandmate Angela and I live together, and we have a very large collection of art books. As part of the film—and it’s not really a movie, more like a visual component of the concert—

I mean, I say it’s not a movie, there’s no real narrative, but there’s an emotional arc to it. A lot of it will be comprised of photographs we’ve taken of images from the art books that we feel, similar to how we’re approaching the music, could have been a part of Eraserhead. Or when we see them, they remind us—if the universe of Eraserhead, again, instead of being an hour and a half, was five hours long—what other images might have related to those already in it?

To us, how could these images expand on that? So yes, so far, there are hundreds of images—not so many texts. With music in particular, I try not to be too theoretical or analytical.

And text is, by definition, theoretical and analytical.

Is there a particular part of Eraserhead that you now perceive differently after constructing this score?

It’s interesting—other than now, you know, I mean, I had seen the movie several times before we started working on this, just as a fan—but now, because we’re working on it, I’ve seen it many, many, many times in a short period. I don’t know. I think, other than what I mentioned before, the sexuality of the film and the dark sexuality of the film seems much more apparent to me than it ever had before.

Every other time I had seen it, I obviously saw those things, but they didn’t register to me as being quite so central—or the physicality of it. To me, it had seemed very atmospheric, very bleak, very unsettling. But I mean, Henry’s whole body explodes.

The guts of the strange, malformed baby spill out. Henry pulls the baby from Mary’s body. The Lady in the Radiator stomps on the baby’s body—or on the cousins of the baby. There’s so much repulsive physicality to it, which I think I had never really noticed before.

And I think we’re trying to emphasize that in the concert.

Did you feel any need to preserve iconic sonic moments, like the “In Heaven” scene, or did you completely reinterpret them?

There are three kind of known pieces of music. There’s In Heaven, which is an original song—we are going to do that.

We haven’t yet figured out exactly how we’ll approach it, but it’ll definitely be included. There are also two organ pieces: Lennox Blues, which Henry plays on a record, and Stompin’ the Bug, heard during the scene where the Lady in the Radiator crushes the baby’s cousins.

We’ll have those in it. It won’t sound like it does in the movie, but there’ll be interpretations of those pieces of music included.

How did the Factory Photographs project with Lawrence English come about?

Almost in the exact same way that Twin Peaks had come about. The first major and total retrospective of David Lynch’s work was at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, and we had been asked by the curator, José Da Silva, to play the music of Twin Peaks there.

Completely by coincidence, while we were there, the third season of Twin Peaks was announced. So Twin Peaks was very much in the zeitgeist again. We didn’t know. We thought we would just be playing that one concert, and that would be it. We didn’t realize we’d be playing it for the next two years, and we definitely didn’t realize we’d be making a record of it.

At that very same time, we were also asked to do a similar project using David Lynch’s Factory Photographs. Lawrence English and I have a band called Hexa, and Hexa was asked by José Da Silva as well to do that music at the same time.

Beyond the live context, do you envision a possible installation, film remix, or digital release connected to this score?

We’re making a record of it—we actually just sorted that out yesterday. And the “film” or the visuals that we use—I hate the word visuals, but we’ll probably say film—during the concert will be available somewhere.

Either on our own Bandcamp page called Xiu Xiu 69, which is different from the regular Xiu Xiu one. On the regular Xiu Xiu Bandcamp page, there are our normal records. But on Xiu Xiu 69, there are bizarro side projects, drunk commentaries, and things like that.

We might have it there, or we might have it available with the record. We’re not sure. But it’ll be out in the world aside from the concerts.

Are there any works of visual art or cinema that have had a similar lasting impact on you as Eraserhead?

Oh, yeah. I’m a massive movie fan, and Xiu Xiu would not exist without movies. It’s an entirely other and totally different interview.

Can you share any details about future Xiu Xiu projects currently in progress?

We’re working on a new record, a follow-up to the one we put out last year. We’ve begun that in earnest. We’re also working on this Eraserhead thing.

Angela’s working on a solo record under her own name, Hyun-Hye Seo. Our subscription is now entering its fourth year, which seems crazy to me. And we’re producing a couple of records—and this Eraserhead thing.

So, a full plate, which we prefer.

FAQ: Xiu Xiu Eraserhead Live Score

Xiu Xiu’s official site

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others