‘It’s incredible what comes out of Angelo,” David Lynch once said. “He is a master of heart and beauty.” Those qualities, as well moments of droning dread and subtle jazz grooves, oozed out of Angelo Badalamenti’s fingertips when he touched his piano and shaped Lynch’s cinematic worlds. Badalamenti’s music was not simply a sonic accompaniment to his images but something that pulsed, swelled and swayed through Lynch’s surreal terrain, almost a character in its own right.
Badalamenti had an esteemed and varied career writing music on and off screen, working with everyone from David Bowie to Nina Simone, but his ability to construct engulfing worlds, with palpable, tactile sonic landscapes was at its absolute best with Lynch. Especially on Twin Peaks – a score that exists as an unimpeachable benchmark for modern television that has been sampled by Moby, DJ Shadow and the KLF.
