Floyd press photo.
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This year seemed to be an especially cruel cultural gut punch, with the loss of icons we loved. It likely began at the start of 2025 with the passing of the auteur, David Lynch. The Montana-born director, author, producer, music festival organizer, and painter created the mind-bending whodunit Twin Peaks for primetime television in 1990. Although it lasted only two seasons, it was enough to become a wellspring for three decades of artists to draw upon.
Other shows and films under Lynch’s belt included the Oscar-nominated Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart, and the 2017 third season of Twin Peaks, twenty-seven years after the season two finale, Twin Peaks: The Return. He hardly capitulated to Hollywood or an algorithm for direction. Lynch’s discography dived headfirst into the occult, surreal, laughter, fear, America, questions — so many questions — and, importantly, music. For example, the Twin Peaks soundtrack that Lynch and his longtime collaborators Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise created became timeless with its jazz noir, dreamy synths, and tender-as-night piano melodies. Badalamenti died from natural causes in 2022. Cruise died by suicide that same year.
Next month, Downtown’s the Ground and Floyd, venues within Club Space, will host No Hay Banda, a musical celebration of David Lynch. No Hay Banda is a reference to 2001’s Mulholland Drive. “I don’t know how I came up with this,” Santi Vidal, III Points talent buyer/curator, confesses to New Times. “When Lynch passed, it was right as Los Angeles burned down. It was a couple of weeks later that I had this vision that honors him in a weird musical way that Lynch always had.”
The lineup features Lynch collaborators and aficionados, contrasting with the usual tech-house fare that the Club Space Terrace typically hosts. On the bill are Johnny Jewel, a collaborator on the Twin Peaks: The Return soundtrack, singer-songwriter Zola Jesus, who will be playing on a Grand Piano, and Xiu Xiu, an experimental rock band.
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The doors connecting Floyd and Ground will be open, and attendees can travel freely between the two. Miami’s installation artists, Mokibaby, will curate both spaces to honor Lynch’s canon. “There’s always this expectation of music performance to Lynch,” says Vidal. “Since that is what we do, I thought it would be the right way to honor him. The entrance will be at Floyd, and you’ll be able to enter the Ground through a door straight ahead. The three headliners will be at the Ground, and then we’ll open Floyd at 10:00 p.m.”
Floyd will feature Diego Melgar covering the jazz music of Twin Peaks. A Twin Peaks fan can immediately see the inspiration the show drew from Floyd in its black-and-white entryway flooring, red curtains, and Greek statues. Following Melgar will be ethereal DJ sets and a back-to-back between Vidal (AKA True Vine) and David Sinopoli.
San Jose’s Jamie Stewart founded Xiu Xiu in 2002. The band—Stewart, Angela Seo, and David Kendrick—will pay homage to Lynch’s debut film from 1977, Eraserhead.
“Xiu Xiu wouldn’t exist without Lynch,” Stewart says straightforwardly to New Times from his Berlin home. In 2016, Xiu Xiu released Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, a collection of covers from the original soundtrack, including a distorted take on the theme song, “Falling,” sung by Cruise and produced by Lynch and Badalamenti.
“In 2015, we were asked by the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane to play the soundtrack of Twin Peaks at the first complete showing of David Lynch’s work, his music, films, and paintings. The day we arrived, it was announced that the third season of Twin Peaks would be released. The timing was perfect. We thought it would be two concerts, and it continued, and we played those concerts for a couple of years.”
Stewart explains that the Miami show will not be another Twin Peaks cover; the band wanted to preserve the memories made and take a different angle to remember the legacy. “Although all his soundtracks are excellent, it’s really Twin Peaks and Eraserhead that have this singular musical aesthetic.” The group decided to tour their version of the nightmarish film. If you were to watch Eraserhead — ideally not late at night by yourself — you will hear Lynch’s pedigree in music.
The soundtrack features thick, hazy ambient interludes that are devoid of pulses or beats. There is horrific static noise creeping in and out. “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” has a Nina Simone quality, something to sing along to, but filtered with a grainy gramophone sound that makes it off-kilter and indigestible.
“While we play ‘In Heaven’, we really wanted to explore the very particular soundscape,” explains Stewart. “They’re incredibly minimal yet specific, so our approach was much more of a tribute to that world while not necessarily covering that world.” Stewart posits that “if Eraserworld is a planet, the music and sounds that we are making are the detritus — the space garbage — that is of the planet but not the planet. If you’re totally unfamiliar with the film, we hope that is the goal, that it still works as a piece of music.” The same day as No Hay Banda, Xiu Xiu will be releasing Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, a collection of covers from “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” off the label, Polyvinyl.
Ultimately, Vidal hopes No Hay Banda will create a “living installation” that reaches the center of Lynch’s mind. He adds that Lynch has always had an influence on III Points, leaving Lynchian Easter eggs scattered throughout the grounds. “This year it was all over the festival, but since I do the lineups, I always leave something related on the lineup poster or on our credentials or on the screens at the main stage.” While Lynch never performed at III Points, Vidal once sent Lynch a list of pitches for consideration. Lynch politely declined but relayed to the team that the ideas were, indeed, “very cool.”
A popular post that has made its way across people’s algorithms is a picture of Lynch, with thick gray hair, wearing a black dress shirt, inside his office, with the caption “I’m wearing sunglasses because the future is bright.” It’s difficult to believe that, since Lynch’s passing, but perhaps the statement went beyond the present. The future is bright because Lynch created such a wild past. “At the time of creating Xiu Xiu,” recounts Stewart, “it was the first time that I had seen Twin Peaks, and I was deeply and profoundly inspired by the show’s ability to be very funny, incredibly strange; the way it dealt with the supernatural, the darkly sexual and violent, but also very sweet. It was all in one episode.”
No Hay Banda: A Musical Celebration of David Lynch: With Johnny Jewel, Zola Jesus, and Xiu Xiu. 8 p.m. Friday, January 16, at the Ground and Floyd, 34 NE 11th St., Miami; thegroundmiami.com. Tickets cost $14.99 via dice.fm.
