Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 2XLP
Music by Angelo Badalamenti
Artwork by Sam Smith
Few TV series have been as compelling as Twin Peaks. Being a very strange show about death, mystery, and the supernatural that somehow captivated its audience, it’s even more remarkable how it’s lived on and made new fans after all these years. It probably doesn’t hurt that this bizarre show is even weirder when you place it is its original 1990s setting.
Even if the show had a tumultuous ending which at times seemed like a rush job of creating loose ends just so they can be tied up, what many casual Twin Peaks fans don’t know was that there was an active attempt by creators David Lynch and Mark Frost to bring the series to a better closure with the movie Fire Walk With Me. In perfect Twin Peaks fashion, they decided to address the beginning more than the end: what was Laura Palmer up to the week before she died?
I’m probably in a minority who thinks that Fire Walk With Me is a really good movie. After all, it was incredibly divisive and even hardcore Twin Peaks and David Lynch fans complained that at this point he had gone so far up his own ass that it was a lost cause. Quentin Tarantino was one of these people. I, on the other hand, found the movie as strange and fascinating as the show. There’s something incredibly familiar about it that’s also terribly unsettling and that’s satisfying somehow. More satisfying even is how many answers it gives us to the mystery of Twin Peaks. It must be why we’re still paying attention to this show so many years later.
With this renewed interest, Mondo and Death Waltz Recordings have gone and reissued the soundtrack to both the TV series and Fire Walk with Me. If you didn’t already know, the music of Twin Peaks is as much a cast member as the people on the show itself. It reaches this perfect mix of cheesy, moody, compelling, bold, and dated. And unlike the show’s soundtrack, Fire Walk with Me’s was never meant to divided into themes for the characters. Instead it just plays to compliment the movie. It’s a score in every sense of the word, but a strange and nuanced one.
This edition of the soundtrack once again raises the bar for the packaging. The beautiful gatefold is housed in an oversized cover with trademark cutout zigzag patterns. The sleeves are beautifully printed and house two red 180g vinyl records. Like the movie, this record is thoroughly submerged in death. Was there any doubt that Mondo and Death Waltz know how to make their records sound and look their best?
Fire Walk with Me was unfortunately quickly dismissed and largely forgotten, and as such, the soundtrack never got the attention it deserved. Luckily, this mistake has finally been set right.
Get your copy from the main guys.
