Eraserhead Original Soundtrack (1982)

Composers: David Lynch, Alan R. Splet, Peter Scott Ivers

Tracklist

1. Side A (Digah's Stomp, Lenox Avenue Blues, Stompin' The Bug, Messin' Around With The Blues) 20:08
2. Side B (In Heaven - Lady In The Radiator Song) 18:22
3. In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song) 01:38
4. Pete's Boogie (Previously Unreleased) 03:58
5. Eraserhead Dance Mix 10:16

 

 "Eraserhead" is a 1977 American surrealist horror film written, directed, produced, and edited by David Lynch.

Lynch also created its score and sound design, which included pieces by a variety of other musicians.
Shot in black and white, it was Lynch's first feature-length effort following several short films.
Starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, and Jack Fisk, 

it tells the story of a man who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape.
The soundtrack of the film was composed by David Lynch and Alan R. Splet

and was originally released via I.R.S. Records on LP in the United States on June 15, 1982 with 5 tracks.
Alan R. Splet (December 31, 1939 – December 2, 1994) was an American sound designer and sound editor

known for his collaborations with director David Lynch on "The Elephant Man", "Dune" and "Blue Velvet".
Due to being legally blind, Splet rarely traveled and mainly worked from Berkeley, California.
In 1980, he won an Oscar for his work on the film "The Black Stallion"

and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing for "Never Cry Wolf".
The mood and tone of "Eraserhead" and its soundtrack were influenced by Philadelphia's post-industrial history.

Lynch lived in the city while studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts

and was fascinated by its feeling of constant danger, describing it both as a:

"sick, twisted, violent, fear ridden, decaying place" and "beautiful, if you see it the right way.".
Lynch and Splet used avant-garde approaches to recording on the soundtrack,

including crafting almost every sound in the soundtrack from scratch using bizarre methods.
The ambiance of the love scene in the movie, for example,

was produced by recording air blown through a microphone as it sat inside a bottle floating in a bathtub.
Lynch and Splet worked "9 hours a day for 63 days" to produce the soundtrack and all of the sound effects in the film.

Splet recalls the sound effects Lynch called on him to produce for "Eraserhead" as "snapping, humming, buzzing, banging, like lightning, shrieking, squealing” over the five years it took to produce the film and its soundtrack.
Also during the production of the soundtrack, Lynch drew two telephone wires for Splet,

each line indicating between four and five pitches he wanted to be represented in the movie's music and sound effects.
When Splet played Lynch pipe organ parts from American jazz pianist, organist, Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller

(May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) as soundtrack material, Lynch was immediately confident in the pipe-organ style,

stating that he had "never listened to any other kind of music for ("Eraserhead"). I knew that was it."
Except the excerpts of organ music by Fats Waller the soundtrack also included piano parts by Phil Worde

and the song "In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song)",

written for the film and sang by Peter Scott Ivers (September 20, 1946 – March 3, 1983).

Memory