Angelo Badalamenti - Freshly Squeezed

ORIGINATION Twin Peaks
LAST LISTENED TO every day for a week
CHANCE OF WAKING TO IT astronomic
RATING ★★★★★

When Twin Peaks hit the nation's television screens at the start of the last decade of the twentieth century, I was just a little young to fully appreciate the leap forward in programme making that it represented. Nonetheless I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Film director David Lynch was one of the driving forces behind the show and of all the cinematic elements he introduced, for me it was the soundtrack that made the strongest impression. Strongly jazz-influenced and scored by long-time Lynch associate Angelo Badalamenti, it was and is almost unique in its filmic approach to television. It contains several leitmotifs, not least of which is the cyclic, strolling bass line that features prominently in Freshly Squeezed.

The piece was first introduced onscreen when FBI Agent Dale Cooper, who is having breakfast at his hotel, is approached by coquettish teenager Audrey Horne. Something of the multi-level nature of that encounter is carried in the music, which is playful yet holds the sexual undertones.

The two most important elements of the piece, however, are the cycling bass and the vibraphone. The bass is the very epitome of cool, which oozed from many of the show's characters and in particular Agent Cooper. Good or bad, the inhabitants of Twin Peaks were almost all very cool and the bass line, repeated with variations across several parts of the score, reinforces that impression. In contrast, the ethereal modulation of the vibraphone represents the show's dream world, again most commonly shown in Agent Cooper. In the combination of these two sounds, Freshly Squeezed has become for me the part that most represents the whole.