David Lynch's road movie 'Wild at Heart' was the initial inspiration for this playlist.
There's no surfing in the film, but the powerful surf-rock inspired ballad 'Wicked Game', that plays over the radio of a lonesome desert night-drive, fits the mood perfectly.
It propelled me to collect together several other contemporary instrumental surf-rock artists that I know of that fit a similar mood. Artists who weren't afraid of revitalising the surf sound; blending the well-known swathes of gurgling reverb with genres such as progressive metal, country, atmospheric ambient and electronica to expand the boundaries of surf-rock to that of the final frontier itself - space!
In some ways, it's music not for surfing waves, but for scaling sinister lonesome, deserted highways of America's Big Sky country - and, in that vein, I've titled it 'Big Surf'. In many ways it is similar to the uplifting drones and wails found in desert-rock artists such as Kyuss, but with that refreshing underwater sound of the surf.
Artists & albums:
The Mermen - The Amazing California Health and Happiness Road Show (N.B. Powerful atmospheres)
The Mermen - Krill Slippin
Gaylord - Resplendent Locution (N.B. Bit of Prog; relatively unknown)
Los Straitjackets - Damas Y Caballeros... los straitjacket
Man or Astro-Man - Experiment Zero
