Track Listing

1. Theme from Twin Peaks-Fire Walk with Me
2. Pine Float - Julee Cruise
3. Sycamore Trees
4. Don't Do Anything (I Wouldn't Do) - Angelo Badalamenti, Thought Gang
5. Real Indication
6. Questions in a World of Blue
7. Pink Room
8. Black Dog Runs at Night
9. Best Friends
10. Moving Through Time - Little Jimmy Scott
11. Montage from Twin Peaks: Girl Talk/Birds in Hell/Laura Palmer's Theme/
12. Voice of Love - Angelo Badalamenti, Thought Gang

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36458 in Music
• Released on: 1992-08-11
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Original language: English, Icelandic

Amazon.com
The music for Fire Walk with Me, David Lynch's brooding feature film follow-up to the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks, again uses the talents of Angelo Badalamenti to create a chilling backdrop to Lynch's dark psychosexual thriller. Film noir is once again the touchstone for this perfectly pitched score, and these 10 tracks stand repeated listening in their own right. This is in part due to the use of some top notch jazz players such as Buster Williams, Grady Tate, and Vinnie Bell, as well as vocalist Jimmy Scott's haunting delivery on "Sycamore Trees." Sax, vibes, upright bass, and percussion set a smoky atmosphere, and the eerie synthesizer and string arrangements augment the general spine-tingling melancholy and menace. Singer Julee Cruise also appears, lending angelic repression to "Questions in a World of Blue"; Lynch contributes compositions and percussion throughout this exercise in bleakness and love gone awry. --Derek Rath

Customer Reviews

A Classic of Diversity
It's been nearly seven years since the FIRE, WALK WITH ME soundtrack first appeared, and as other rave reviews here attest, it has if anything increased its appeal. What makes the album especially unique is its diversity. Film scores are usually all of a kind, and Angelo Badalamenti ­ who became a household name with his music for the TWIN PEAKS series on TV ­ could have followed that course. But except for the obligatory Julee Cruise song "Questions in a World of Blue" (good, but not in the same class as "Falling" or "The World Spins"), he avoided that temptation. Instead, he plays with musical genres and perhaps even invents new ones. The opening theme (also known as "She Would Die for Love") and "Don't Do Anything (I wouldn't Do)" are among the best film noir jazz and cool jazz pieces ever written; they would be right at home in night club repertories. But where else have we heard anyting resembling "Sycamore Trees" (which helped revive the career of Jimmy Scott)? Or "A Real Indication" (sort of a cross between rap and a parody of beat poetry from the 60's)? "Moving through Time" plays like a reinvention of chamber music, with jazz instrumentation but classical structure. Everyone who writes about Badalamenti seems to stress his reliance on synthesizers, but what is really important about his work is his synthesis of musical styles and genres in the tradition of George Gershwin and Nino Rota.As a footnote, it's startling to hear "The Pink Room" after reading accounts that David Lynch himself knows nothing about music. He can obviously give techno music composers a run for their money!

Not your average soundtrack
By the third track of this collection, people usually ask "what the heck is this?", when I play it at work. When the familiar trebly bass intro of the "Twin Peaks" theme surfaces, everyone knows it's the world of David Lynch, rising up from today's post-modern stupor to alternately jar and soothe the psyche. The music is as bizarre and yet as intriguing as the film; it's also a testament to the symbiosis of director Lynch and composer/compiler Angelo Badalamenti that moods and themes in cinema both inspire and demand great music. For me the best (and most haunting) track is "Sycamore Trees", which played, curiously enough, in the final episode of the television series, not in "Fire Walk With Me". Still, it's good to have the complete, off-kilter soundtrack to a fascinating world.

Great soundtrack that can also stand alone
Before we start here, let's get one thing straight: I do not listen to this type of music. I usually need to be in a very special mood to listen to this sort of dark, dreamy jazz, and my atypical reaction to this album is what makes me feel qualified to review it.

The slow to mid-tempo jazz on this CD represent some of the best film music I've ever heard, matched perfectly to the visual tale of Laura Palmer's tragic descent into hell. It stands alone just as well.

The album opens with the almost disturbing, after-midnight Theme from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and kicks right into the shady The Pine Float. The tracks don't segue, but they flow together so well that unless you're listening closely, you won't notice the breaks between pieces. There are a few lyric songs here, too, the abstract The Black Dog Runs At Night, and the plaintive Sycamore Trees. Of special note, however, are Questions In A World Of Blue with vocals by longtime Lynch/Badalamenti corroborator Julee Cruise and A Real Indication with raw, beat-poetry vocals delivered by Badalamenti himself. The Pink Room takes us into the hell of Laura Palmer's last days, and Best Friends lifts us back out. Moving Through Time is an incredible, surreal, almost minimalist piece. The famous Twin Peaks theme (falling) makes an appearance too as part of a montage.

All in all, a very tight CD. It has low points just as well as its high points (I'm not so fond of Sycamore Trees or Don't Do Anything (I Wouldn't Do), but I might be alone in that), but the good far outweighs the bad. This CD is a must for any fan of Twin Peaks or Angelo Badalamenti, and for anyone who's simply looking to expand their music collection with something worth listening to.