Xiu Xiu - Eraserhead Xiu Xiu Xiu Xiu

In 2016, with the blessing of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, Xiu Xiu released and toured the unexpectedly successful Plays the Music of Twin Peaks. Out of respect for the beloved series, the band chose to retire the performance in 2018.

Following the recent passing of David Lynch, however, Xiu Xiu began receiving numerous high-profile requests to revive their interpretation of the music. Rather than revisit old ground, the group chose instead to move further into Lynch’s artistic universe, continuing to follow the spirit of experimentation and challenge that defined his work.

The result is Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, a new live concert accompanied by a film and full-length album that channels the bizarre emotionality, conflicted sexuality, relentless darkness and deeply unsettled atmosphere of Lynch’s midnight masterpiece Eraserhead.

Built from field recordings, homemade instruments designed specifically for the performances, organ, modular synthesisers, vocals, flashlights, electrical interference and elements of musique concrète, the project transforms the original film into an immersive audiovisual experience.

The album itself unfolds as a striking work of sound collage and experimentation. Tracks such as Tetra and Sleep Synth move between near-silent auditory textures and grotesque walls of overwhelming noise. Closing piece In Heaven offers a haunting reinterpretation of Peter Ivers’ original composition, with Jamie Stewart’s delicate vocals revealing the strange beauty and vulnerability embedded within Lynch’s directorial debut.

The original sound design and score by Alan Splet and Lynch serve as guiding forces throughout Xiu Xiu’s expanded interpretation, while the film itself inspires a new visual language built from imagined fragments and phantom auxiliary footage.

Whether experienced as an art installation, a fractured tribute to a cinematic landmark, or an epitaph to an idol through entirely new work, Eraserhead Xiu Xiu embraces all of those possibilities at once.

Intense, unsettling, curious and drenched in darkness — of course it is. After all, it is Eraserhead.