Test press #2

‘It was a grand experiment,” says David Lynch. “But I really don’t know who will appreciate it.” The director is talking about Thought Gang, an esoteric jazz group he put together in the early 1990s, with composer Angelo Badalamenti. Their album is only now being released.

The pair first worked together when Badalamenti scored 1986’s Blue Velvet, but by 1990 their relationship had fully crystallised – and the songs they wrote for Twin Peaks were as engulfing as the fog that swirled through the town in the cult TV show.

“But this was so different to Twin Peaks,” says Lynch. In a studio filled with jazz musicians, the director talked them through his vision until they caught a groove. He then needed a singer – and Badalamenti stepped up. “I’d heard him sing before and I thought, ‘This is gonna be embarrassing for him.’ But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said OK.”

‘When music comes together, it makes me hopeful for mankind’ … Lynch in 1989, with Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti, singer and composer of the Twin Peaks theme. Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When music comes together, it makes me hopeful for mankind’ … Lynch in 1989, with Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti, singer and composer of the Twin Peaks theme. Photograph: Michel Delsol/Getty What Lynch heard – above the sparse drums, gambolling bassline, skewwhiff strings and screeching brass – was a vocal delivery that knocked him out: a half-sung croaky voice that was part Tom Waits, part comic-book villain. “It thrilled me,” says Lynch. “I started laughing so hard I felt a lightbulb explode in my stomach. I gave myself a hernia. That moment was pain and joy mixed together, a perfect balance.”

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