Bleep

Before Angelo Badalamenti accrued the legacy of an in demand composer, he was Andy Badale, a successful songwriter for the likes of Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, and Roy Hamilton during the 60s, while penning only a handful of soundtracks in the 70s. A new chapter opened up the second half of Badalamenti’s life as he began his long, fruitful, and fateful relationship with David Lynch, the 1986 soundtrack for Blue Velvet skyrocketing his opportunities as a composer, but it would be the ultimate cult classic 90s TV series Twin Peaks that produced some of the most defining and enduring work in both composer and director’s legacies.

Minimal tuned down electric guitar plucks wade knee deep in tremolo, and in come the iconic synth melodies and brassy swells of ‘Twin Peaks Theme’ which are practically ingrained in everyone’s brains. They trace the mystery, romance, dreaminess, drama, wonder, and catharsis of that strange town in the Pacific Northwest, a perfect union of the audiovisual otherworld Lynch and Badalamenti constructed. Even by itself, the theme is endlessly influential: it won Badalamenti a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance in 1991, and was remixed by fellow Lynchian fanatic and collaborator Flying Lotus. Its lyrical accompaniment ‘Falling’, where Julee Cruise enters as the gossamer smooth voice of a chanteuse in the meditative limelight, was equally prosperous: the globally chart topping single from Cruise’s 1989 debut album Floating Into The Night, covered by Xiu Xiu on their 2016 Twin Peaks tribute album.

These two songs bookend a soundtrack full of soporific shuffles and swarms of unease. The low stab of a piano hangs in the background of ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ drifting between light and dark, the synth instruments wobble in the covert cabaret number ‘Audrey’s Dance’ while horns sound the alarm, the walking bassline of ‘The Bookhouse Boys’ saunters assuredly as jazz drums frantically burst around it. The familiarity of these themes, their motifs and mixture of jazz, lounge, ambient, and dream pop, are a comforting presence, yet still contain an enticing slice of the unknown that has made them integral to the canon of musical scores and pop culture at large.