as you may have heard from our local los angeles weatherman, we lost angelo badalamenti this week. and fuck, what a loss.

i first heard angelo's work on the LOST HIGHWAY soundtrack (long before i saw the movie, lynch's bleakest). like most humans, i don't understand jazz, nor the way listeners of jazz are constantly jazzing all over themselves about it. but i fell in love with RED BATS WITH TEETH and angelo's other contributions to the album. his hypnotizing music began to open my young mind, and is perhaps the entire reason i still voraciously listen to film scores.

there are filmmaker/composer relationships where it's impossible to imagine one without the other. christopher nolan and hans zimmer come to mind -- looking back, wasn't hans kind of directing ~35% of those movies? nolan is a visionary who's nonetheless obtuse about humanity, emotions, and heart in his adorably snooty british way. it's hans who made us understand, who made us feel those movies. i firmly believe if hans had scored TENET it wouldn't have taken me three viewings (and subtitles) to understand and appreciate it.

(even hans couldn't save DUNKIRK, he's not a fucking wizard.)

lynch and badalamenti are one of those symbiotic, lifelong creative relationships that come along oh so rarely. lynch knew how to visualize the utterly surreal feeling of a waking dream (or nightmare), and badalamenti know how to make us believe it. his music has the power to transport the listener to another world even without lynch's incredible visuals -- combined, they level of artistry they achieved is incomparable. i've been listening to my TWIN PEAKS soundtracks all week, and MOVING THROUGH TIME from FIRE WALK WITH ME (accompanied with some beautiful fan art in that video) is one i couldn't stop playing over and over. it makes me think of laura. it makes me think of the wonder and tranquility and foreboding every dream (or drug trip) i've ever had. it makes me think of what monica belluci so sweetly said in THE RETURN... "we are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream."

"...but who is the dreamer?"

angelo was one. and now he's gone.

2022.12.17