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Arts & Entertainment

RHS Alum Julian Lynch Rides 'Mare' to Musical Success

Experimental woodwind folkster Lynch recently released album to online acclaim.

Some of Ridgewood's residents have recently risen in prominence in the underground music community: Vivian Girls, Real Estate and Big Troubles all call 07450 home. Among those ranks is Julian Lynch, an affable guy with a knack for experimental yet alluring folk songs.

His latest album, Mare, garnered a "Best New Music" designation from popular indie music site Pitchfork.com, although he's been steadily building up a discography for a few years now. His ultimate goal is to finish his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison so he can teach music, while still releasing records on the side. The guy is ambitious, but he's modest, too.

"Internet media is a very momentary thing. Two days after [the Pitchfork review] got published, there was a flurry of activity in my e-mail box," Lynch says. "But I don't know if people in my program necessarily keep up with that stuff. It's out there. I feel a little self-conscious about it, since there are people in that department that are way more proficient on their instruments than I am."

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Ridgwood was Lynch's home until he left for college, but he still maintains close ties to the town. In fact, his phone interview with Patch was conducted while he was en route to play a show in Philadelphia, after which he was going to visit his parents. What a good son.

"You don't appreciate the same things as a kid as you do as an adult," he says. "I think now it's a great place to grow up, but at the time it was a sheltered place. School system's excellent. It's safe. It's a nice place to visit. My friends still live here."

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While his earliest musical inspirations are atypical for American youth—ranging from Green Day to Pink Floyd to The Beach Boys—Lynch got a solid background on clarinet thanks specifically to Ridgewood.

"The school system in Ridgewood, I think, has a pretty long history of being music-oriented. Apparently even the elementary schools get you started on band and orchestra instruments pretty early on," he says, which is true as the Ridgewood school district was named a "Best Community for Music Education" by the NAMM Foundation.

It also helped that he lived so close to New York City, where shows were always available.

Eventually, the New Jersey native began playing shows of his own, both at Ridgewood High School's open mic nights and at Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles' house in nearby Glen Rock. By that point, Lynch had graduated from clarinet to guitar.

"Clarinet is the most uncool instrument to play once you're in sixth grade. I lost interest in it," he says. After college, however, he came back around, pulling influences from the likes of Paul Winter, Kadri Gopalnaph and Brian Eno to create something woodwind-based and wholly his own.

Mare just came out, but Lynch already has other projects in the works, citing a need to turn out an album every year or so. He also recently provided music for the film How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body, which director Amy Ruhl describes as "a fantasy biography—a hybrid of fact, cultural myth and my own  interpretation of a real historical figure: The infamous spy and exotic dancer, Mata Hari."

Visit Lynch's MySpace page for samples of his work.

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