If the title of this album didn’t give it away Melbourne outfit The Escalators make music inspired by the work of David Lynch. Of course given that Lynch’s work is intrinsically linked with the beautiful evocative sounds of Angelo Badalamenti they’re really facing an uphill battle. Yet this project doesn’t feel like a slavish homage, and despite the fact that this septet in the main come from jazz and experimental (or both) backgrounds, you get the sense that their inspiration comes not from the music per se, rather the evocative worlds and constructs that Lynch creates. The band include members of the Adam Simmons Toy Band, CW. Stoneking, The Antipodean Collective, Malakat and the Ned Collette band and the music runs the gamut of gentle quite restrained atmospheric jazz to Bucketrideresque noisy free jazz. It’s a Twin Peaks themed album, with titles like Log Lady, The Great Northern, or James: Boy on a Motorcycle. Yet it’s hard to know how the link was made to Lynch and why the band feel the need to overt it via song titles and the occasional strange voiced backward masking (a midget perhaps?). Not that this is a problem mind you. There are however some strange things going on here, curious mixing decisions that serve to really mess with both your understanding of the music and your sense of normality and where it all fits in space and time. And perhaps it’s these very Lynchian notions that The Escalators use as a musical starting point. Often there’s strange sounds existing alongside the music which is slightly unnerving, never really feeling part of the music, yet never overting itself to the extent that it becomes particularly apparent or distracting. It’s almost subliminal, yet provides an additional layer of complexity or roughage to the music. This music is complex and distinctive enough to exist without the Lynch link, but for a diehard Twin Peaks fan, well it only adds to the allure.
Bob Baker Fish
