Which
makes the news of Lynch and Badalamenti’s thought-to-be long lost Thought Gang musical project resurfacing
in a newly remastered vinyl release album via Sacred Bones Records all the more
exciting to behold. What this Lynch fan
wasn’t counting on, however, was just how many different areas the dynamic duo’s
music under the Thought Gang moniker
found it’s way into.
Originally
composed between 1992 and 1993 during the heyday of Twin Peaks with the album’s most well-known tracks A Real Indication and The Black Dog Runs at Night finding
their way into the feature film prequel Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, this twelve-track album of freeform experimental
jazz, sprawling white noise ambience and industrial instrumentation amid
Badalamenti’s trademark synth keyboarding represents a rediscovered treasure
trove of Lynch/Badalamenti material with more surprises than one initially
expects. In between purely instrumental
tracks of so-called ‘psycho-jazz’ are spoken words voiced by none other than
Angelo Badalamenti with some truly strange lyrics akin to Lynch’s own singing
in the Inland Empire soundtrack with Ghosts of Love.
Standout
tracks include One Dog Bark which
fans of Mulholland Drive will
instantly recognize from the scene where Adam Kesher announces his engagement
to Camilla Rhodes as well as Frank 2000
which showed up in the third episode of Twin
Peaks: The Return. Unlike the
traditional Twin Peaks tracks on the
soundtrack albums, the stuff heard here is far more atonal, abrasive,
deliberately absurd and far more industrial than most of what you think you’ve
heard from these two. Other tracks sound
like they’d feel right at home during the third act of Lynch’s sprawling
three-hour opus Inland Empire,
particularly A Meaningless Conversation which
sounds curiously like Walkin’ on the Sky with
Badalamenti babbling ‘num num num num’ over strumming guitars, snare drums and
saxophones.
For
Lynch fans waiting with baited breath for anything new or old material recently
unearthed, Thought Gang is very much
a sharp-edged metallic and organic Lincoln Log which instantly connects loose
ends left by Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Like most new Lynch offerings, not every
burning question people have will be answered by the pieces being included but
they do open up far more doors connecting the disparate film properties together
in ways both unexpected and foreseen from miles away. All in all, an essential acquisition for any
David Lynch and/or Twin Peaks fan’s
library!
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki