The music of ep. 8

[Low Entropy]

No music has ever touched me like the composition during the levitation scene. Is it just me or were there hints (inspirations) of Laura's theme in it? The two-chord repetition that ends on a bass sound.

[Novalis]

This is the episode that has least dialogue in it (I'm guessing -- a safe guess perhaps?), but it's more than made up for by the music. I'm 100% behind the NIN performance, both as a kind of intermezzo / interlude (complete with Jimmy Scott lookalike making a perfect 'old person' error -- totally knowingly I might add), as a fitting atmospheric piece to set up the re-animation of DoppelCoop, and thirdly for the insanely simple but beautiful lyrics of She's Gone Away which are perfectly suited to a kind of grimness, a fatalistic resignation to the death of Laura Palmer. We were there on the day she died, the song reminds us. There's no going back: she's gone, she's gone, she's gone away.

Contrast the atomic bomb vignette. The frozen beauty of the mushroom cloud is rendered as a psychologically intimate moment through the drone that accompanies our approach -- a cinematic sequence that will stay with me for some time.

That slow 30s room interior music made me buy the Lynch & Hurley album. There's something in its haphazard time-signature-wrecking skips and jumps that chimes just right. Despite the heavy processing, it takes a resolute will to hear it as lo-fi and scratchy, because there is something very creamy and blissful about the ascent and descent of those chords, like an Escher staircase for the ears.

So, although dialogue is minimal, this is an episode where I find the music really speaks.

[IcedOver]

A better NIN song to use in this episode would have been "Into the Void" with the lyric "Tried to save myself, but my self keeps slipping away."

[Mr. Strawberry]

Skinny Puppy would have been much more appropriate for the Roadhouse performance. Not knocking Trent Reznor's work at all, but this was my gut reaction when viewing the scene, and I'm curious to know if anyone else felt the same way.

The fact that David Lynch and Skinny Puppy have never worked together is a shame. There's real potential there.

[alreadygoneplaces]

Forgive me if this is considered sacrilege, but Badalamenti's synths just aren't working for me in this series (particularly in the hit and run and ??????? levitation scenes). What they did with the Penderecki was phenomenal, the 'slow 30s room' if that's what its called was beautiful. Platters lyrics gave me a wry smile. The slowed down Beethoven was wonderfully gloopy.

As for NIN... having a full song at that point in the episode worked structurally, and (Reznor's ridiculous machismo aside) their performance was pretty good (awesome guitar!)... but their inclusion here irritated me. Having a band as huge as NIN playing as NIN at the roadhouse took me out of the show for 5 minutes... I think the bands in the show work a lot better when they're less known musicians. But as it was, it felt like a gratuitous promotional slot for a band that doesn't need any more promotion.

[wxray]

Forgive me if this is considered sacrilege, but Badalamenti's synths just aren't working for me in this series

Like DKL, he's changed. No doubt about it.

I liked the levitation piece, and the way it had echos of both "Slow 30s" and "Laura Palmer's Theme". But I still understand your thoughts, and we won't ex-communicate you for your sacrilege.