David Lynch's Twin Peaks remains one of the most ambitious and indeed popular television series of all times.  Almost as popular is Angelo Badalamenti's music.  Of course, Badalamenti's collaboration with Lynch already stretched back on a number of movie collaborations and has continued to this day with several more, but it would be easy to see Twin Peaks as the absolute pinnacle of their work together, with the composer's dreamy, textured music being not only perfect for the show but also making for a first-rate album.

The main theme is very famous, and justifiably so, seemingly having somehow permeated into the consciousness of even those who didn't watch the show.  It's incredibly simple, yet incredible effective, with an electric guitar providing a couple of chords occasionally overlaying Badalamenti's trademark wash of synths.  Just as simple, just as effective and almost as famous is "Laura Palmer's Theme", basically more of the same but with a few winds replacing the synths.

Some of the best cues on the album are among the dreamiest, with Julee Cruise lending her vocal talents to "The Nightingale", "Into the Night" and "Falling".  A combination of straight singing (though with mixing to just add to the fluttering, dreamy effect) and wordless accompaniment, the use of Cruise was a masterstroke, with her style perfectly complementing what Badalamenti and Lynch were trying to achieve with the scoring of the show.  Finally come a few fairly low-key pieces of jazz, attractive in their own way, highly-evocative and rather atmospheric.

While I would argue that at the high-end of the spectrum, the standard of music written for episodic television has risen a little in the last couple of years, in 1990 at the time of Twin Peaks it was probably at an all time low with most production companies opting for an inexperienced composer with a synthesiser to provide their music, and this possibly makes Badalamenti's intelligent, multi-layered approach all the more impressive.  Twin Peaks has been a high-selling album since it was first released and it's not difficult to see why - this is almost certainly among the best music written for a weekly tv show since the 1960s.

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