Angelo Badamelenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - OST

A colleague once said to me that regardless of your view on the David Lynch prequel movie Fire Walk With Me, there could be no arguing that the soundtrack for it is just simply incredible. I'm inclined to agree, as an avid Twin Peaks fan, my opinion on the jarringly bleak (and sans Mark Frost!) film seems to change daily. I cannot however, find fault with the hauntingly brilliant soundtrack, which was mainly composed by the legendary Angelo Badamelenti and features the usual collaborators such as Lynch himself, Julee Cruise and for one particularly poignant track, the late Jimmy Scott. 

First off, please don't think that the entire score of the film appears on this record. Like the records released for Twin Peaks seasons 1 & 2, there are quite a number of omissions here (in fact there are hours upon hours of tracks recorded for Twin Peaks which were released online by David Lynch long after the demise of the show). Confusingly, the beautiful "Sycamore Trees", which featured in the Twin Peaks TV show, not the movie, appears here on this soundtrack album. Similarly, the track "Deer Meadow Shuffle", which is from the movie Fire Walk With Me, doesn't appear here but ends up on the season 3 soundtrack album released this year (25 years later!). What the hell?

The bizarre irregularities aside, the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack as a whole is a morose trip through both moody and swinging jazz, dotted with intense synthesizer soundscape passages and incredible guest vocal appearances. It is something, that despite being out of my usual field of listening, gets a lot of plays from me. The title track itself is simply unforgettable. 

On a final note, be wary of the recent vinyl represses of this soundtrack. Various reports on sites such as Discogs or in the Amazon comments section reveal a whole host of problems with the coloured discs.

The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation - Roadburn

I was actually lucky enough to be in the room when this performance was recorded, and it was a fascinating hour spent staring at the intense visuals the band had prepared to play alongside their live show. It was one of the more memorable experiences from Roadburn 2012, so I'm very grateful indeed that the entire thing was recorded and released later on as a double 12" package.

Equally delicate as it is at moments crushingly bleak; the twisting, muted soundscapes of The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation are the perfect soundtrack to any form of introspective deviance, be it sensory deprivation, psychedelic drug use or just playing GTA V on mute with this blaring at full volume. Yeah.

Anyway, irregardless of my inane rambling, this is bloody fantastic. 

The Haxan Cloak - Excavation

Presenting you with haunting digital soundscapes from one of the masters of the genre, the Excavation record is a true trip in ethereal ambiance and beatwork. I first spun this at about 4am on a nightshift; it was that eerie time of night when everything literally stops dead, even though I was in a room full of people. There is something about "the witching hour" - that unique stillness - that is just so palpable. The Haxan Cloak was the perfect choice. Perhaps it was fate.

I gave Excavation a listen as a whole, rather than study the layout and the track listing, which is what I usually tend to do when obsessing over something awesome, but everything just seemed to fit together so well as a whole it didn't seem worth breaking down. I just went with the ride, and I enjoyed every second. I almost fell asleep, but it was almost as if my mind was asleep, and not my body.

A fantastic record all round, which seems like it could easily be a film soundtrack of some sorts, if the opportunity was right. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that Haxan Cloak had done a bit of work on the latest Bjork album, which had a slightly darker overtone than a lot of her stuff. Anyways, I digress. Check the links below if you're in the mood.

Stebmo - Stebmo

I had the shock of my life when I saw a tweed jacket wearing Steve Moore perform as Stebmo in 2009, supporting Earth in The Croft, Bristol. What the hell was I watching? To be fair, who knew? And whilst that jazzy-jam of distorted electric piano and drums doesn't sound anything like the Stebmo record, it was entirely responsible for my purchase of it. It took me a while to get around the idea of whether I liked Stebmo or not, but in the end I threw caution to the wind and bought the album. Way to push the boat out!

Like the live show, the Stebmo record is primarily piano and organ driven, although there is a veritable smorgasbord of other instruments and performers chipping in over the whole record. One minute it's elevator music, the next an up-beat jaunt that would be the perfect soundtrack for walking through a big city, and then onto slower, more rousing and thought provoking pieces. This record has it all! I don't really know how to class this album, and I guess if it doesn't class easily then I shouldn't try to, although Discogs has it listed as Avant-garde jazz. Hmm. Out on Invada Records (the Bristol-based one) and as far as I can tell, all the copies are clear vinyl. Also, since this cunt stole my fucking Cattle Decapitation 7" in a bogus trade, the Stebmo record is now by far the clearest clear record I own. That shit is like fucking glass. Check it out below the video link!

 

This (incorrectly titled) video mashes up two tracks off the record; the upbeat and cheesy "Blind Ross" comes first, followed by the much more somber and brooding "Dark Circles". I picked this vid because it shows two different sides to this fantastic record in one link.