Review
Genre and Mood
David Lynch wrote Pinky’s Dream with his engineer Dean Hurley as a nocturnal rock song with Karen O on vocals, and in this Trentemøller remix instrumental the voice is gone and only the nightmare remains. Electronic production, darkwave atmosphere and an industrial edge meet in a mood that is haunting, dark and eerie, pure Lynch even without a single word.
Song Summary
The original, which FACT called a fraught piece of psychotic melodrama, is a feverish, nocturnal song; the remix turns it into what Stereogum heard as an even more sinister synth throb. Without Karen O’s vocal, the instrumental lays bare Trentemøller’s work: pulsing bass, tense, distorted textures and layers of ominous synths, all moving forward like headlights on an empty highway. The memorable detail is how cinematic it feels. Every passage seems to be scoring a scene you cannot quite see.
Musical Breakdown
Intro
A low, pulsing synth emerges from the dark, steady and menacing, setting a pace that feels like an engine idling before a long drive.
Build-up
Drums and bass lock together and the tension climbs, distorted textures creeping in around the edges like shapes in the rear-view mirror.
Main Section
The full groove takes hold, driving and relentless, with brooding melodic lines in the space where the vocal used to be. The absence of a voice makes it even more unsettling.
Climax
The arrangement swells into its most intense passage, noise and melody tangled together with a raw, industrial force, the drive at full speed.
Outro
The layers drop away until only the pulse is left, fading into the dark like a car disappearing over a hill.
Concepts in Focus
A remix rebuilds a recording from its parts, and an instrumental remix shows exactly which parts the remixer chose to keep. Here almost nothing of the original’s band sound survives; what remains is the song’s melodic shape and mood, reconstructed by Trentemøller with his own palette. Hearing the instrumental is like seeing the set of a film with the actors gone.
That palette is the synthesizer: a pulsing low synth for the engine, layered pads and lines for the menace. FACT noted that the Visionquest remix of the same song sounded a fair bit like Trentemøller, a sign of how recognisable his dark, analogue-leaning synth style had become by 2012. Hear it alongside his Danish peers in Lulu Rouge – Lulu’s Theme (feat. Trentemøller).
What pushes the remix toward industrial music is distortion. Overdriven textures give the sound grit and aggression, and in the climax they blur noise and melody together, the ruptured anguish of industrial rock that FACT heard in it.
Artistic Context
The film director David Lynch released his debut album Crazy Clown Time in November 2011, on Sunday Best in Europe and PIAS in the US, recorded at his Asymmetrical Studio in Hollywood and co-composed with Dean Hurley. “Pinky’s Dream”, sung by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, opened it. In summer 2012 the Danish producer Anders Trentemøller remixed the track for the Pinky’s Dream remix EP, alongside remixes by Visionquest and Tythe, released digitally and then on 12-inch vinyl in August, the same season as an expanded reissue of the album. The embedded video is the official upload of the vocal version of this remix.
Impact and Reception
Stereogum described Trentemøller’s remix as turning the original into an even more sinister synth throb, Hypebeast heard a darker edge, and FACT the ruptured anguish of industrial rock, harsher than Lynch’s own track. The instrumental version is for anyone who wants that mood without words, and it works as a soundtrack to whatever film is playing in your own head. Turn the lights off and listen.
