I had the chance to sit down with the three members of ‘a place both wonderful and strange‘ the other day over Skype to conduct a pretty lengthy interview. Though I am still in the process of editing this piece, I wanted to include a small but weighty snippet with the premiere of their latest album The Laura Palmer Deviations.
What draws you to David Lynch and how does that influence your work?
Russ: Lynch manages to take the completely weird and inaccessible and kind of force it down your throat, like telling the audience ‘no you do get’. a place both wonderful and strange is akin to this approach because we take seemingly disparate influences — Janet Jackson, found sound, noise music, David Lynch, extreme darkness and extreme light — and we process it into something that’s completely inaccessible around the edges until you start to experience it. It happens TO you, and it’s in the eye of that tempest that you realize it’s all actually familiar.
Artist’s Statement:
“The Laura Palmer Deviations” is the soundtrack to a place both wonderful and strange’s acclaimed Twin Peaks audio/visual performance piece “Keys Open Doors: The Hidden Life of Laura Palmer” .
“The Hidden Life of Laura Palmer” as a performance, and “The Laura Palmer Deviations” as a recorded piece, works as a frayed and piercing tapestry between the band and other performers, touching on ambient, contemporary electronic, noise, and of course standard Lynchian sounds to “tell the secret tale of the final hours in the tragic life of Laura Palmer”.
