David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti: The Twin Peaks Archive
Twin Peaks is one of those television series that you wonder, how did that make it on ABC? David Lynch and Mark Frost created one of the most timeless, exotic and mysterious shows in the serial drama genre and for prime television as a whole. With the setting of a fictional small town in Washington that goes by the same name of the show, David Lynch and mark Frost were given a playground of possibilities with the budget they acquired and the vision they had going into the project. The show was cancelled due to unfit rating expectations, but like all of the great things in the crowded Hollywood industry, Lynch didn’t let this affect him or stop the continuation of the vision he had worked so hard to get into the hands of the public. Lynch used the energy and momentum of the shows 2 seasons and created the full length feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. With any visual presentation on the big screen or in your living room, the soundtrack element is always a make or break element. David Lynch gathered the talents of American composer Angelo Badalamenti to complete the works that would dominate the two television seasons of Twin Peaks along with Fire Walk With Me. The two worked very close to achieve the unique sound you hear all over the Twin Peaks saga.
David and Angelo worked in an unorthodox way, with Lynch laying out suggestive plots and emotional settings within the characters he had studied for Angelo to correspond with musical responses. Collaboration was spur of the moment and quick. Recording would follow from the two doing collaborative brain storming sessions in that very sitting. Finger snaps, walking deep jazz bass lines, baritone guitar with lots of delay; the soundtrack for the film and television show is very reflective of the new wave movement happening in the 80′s and 90′s, the pulse of the 50′s and the style, flavor and direction only Lynch bring. It’s a mystery how they collaged dreamy and beautiful minimalism in the setting of murder, mysticism, deceit, love and all the other usual suspects of appeal with Lynch’s works. With Lynch gaining a reputation in the music scene this year with the release of his long awaited debut solo record Crazy Clown Town on Europe’s biggest independent label Play It Again Sam, Lynch has begun to parcel out unreleased materials from the archives of the Twin Peaks sessions he completed with Angelo Badalamenti in 1989 on his official site DavidLynch.com.
From twinpeakssoundtrackdesign.blogspot.com
David Lynch relaunched his official website this year to introduce many of his musical works and one of the first digital only releases available is the Twin Peaks Archive. Currently the collection is 90+ tracks deep and it keeps growing. It’s a really intense look at all of the ways Lynch and Angelo approached each song. There is a really cool blogspot by the name of the Twin Peaks Soundtrack Design that has documented all of the cover designs being made for each song. Check it out here. Every idea you hear on the show or the film has a derivative or version used in this archive and there is no question when they will stop updating with more tracks. The pieces include for the television show that are present are reflective of how close each version was to each other. Upon watching the series again, I can definitely hear the subtle differences from show to show. Check this out if you love the world of Twin Peaks.
- Erik Otis
