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5 Twin Peaks Inspired Albums Worth Your Time

Twin Peaks inspired music is everywhere. By now, you’re probably well familiar with David Lynch’s 1990’s cult-classic turned pop-culture phenom. Whether searching for classic shows or just minding your damn business, Twin Peaks iconography is everywhere. Composer Angelo Badalamenti’s score would go on to influence the creation of doom jazz, inspired parody and thousands of musicians. Much like David Lynch, Resident Sound doesn’t like to be too obvious. So while you won’t see Xiu Xiu’s tribute album or the doom jazz stalwarts Dale Cooper Quartet here, get ready to strap in and hear 5 Twin Peaks inspired albums worth your time.

If you’re looking for a refresher, or better yet for someone to explain the entirety of Twin Peaks’ meta-narrative, well, Youtube channel Twin Perfect has you covered:

Now with that out of the way, here’s 5 Twin Peaks Inspired Albums Worth Your Time…

1: Messer Chups – Twin Peaks Twist

Saint Petersburg, Russia’s Messer Chups are the campy horror surf scene’s crown jewel. Often interchangeable with Messer für Frau Müller, the band they originally spun-off from, Messer Chups’ Twin Peaks Twist is a 4 song EP of campy surf tracks. Starting with a slow then fast, off-and-on reworking of the Twin Peaks theme, the EP culminates on Eduard Artemyev’s theme from the 1974 Soviet Russian epic Siberiade.

2: Liquid Rainbow – The Blue Rose Sessions

In reference to Lil in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Blue Rose Sessions are a synth-heavy, spaced-out, post-rock extravaganza. Outside of just being Twin Peaks related (and tolerable), the album blends strange elements in a masterful way. Track Morning Joe mixes heavy vocoder-esque synths, jazzy drums and guitar, organ and banjo in such a way as to make itself almost as distinct as Angelo Badalamenti’s original iconic score. Pulled from the album’s listing on Bandcamp, “This album is inspired by the Art and visionary Genious of David Lynch and Mark Frost… …We’ll keep on dreaming and scrutinizing the Mysteries.”

3: Côte Déserte – Dale Cooper’s Case

Having more in common with its doom jazz predecessors, Dale Cooper’s Case is a piano heavy noir triumph. The half Saint Petersburg, half Moscow based duo Côte Déserte originally released Dale Cooper’s Case in 2011, and followed up the album with Strange To Look At Her. It Seems That… in 2014. Like the best (and all the rest) of doom jazz, the Côte Déserte Bandcamp page has remained more or less abandoned since 2014.

4: Silencio – She’s Bad

It says it right there on the tin, folks: “more music inspired by the works of David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti.” But all you need to do is press play and the influence is immediate. She’s Bad is part Portishead, part April March, part Messur Chups, part… um… huh… Actually, the album is stylistically all over the place, and if there is any one thing it can be called it’s Twin Peaks-y. Get ready for some twangy guitar.

5: El Sonida De Reposa – Pink Room / Just You

To pick a Twin Peaks song so notoriously hated and farcical and then decide to to record and press it to vinyl as a single has to be one of the more interesting choices within Twin Peaks inspired music circles. But what else is there to say? It’s a good record. If you ever wanted to hear a version of Just You that didn’t include Twin Peaks most-hated character James Hurley’s high-pitched awkwardness, well, this record is for you.

Honorable Mention: Black Market – Welcome To Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks reggae dub, anyone…?

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy Resident Sound’s Guide To The Fast Paced, Lighthearted World of DOOM JAZZ…

REVIEW: Igorrr – Moisissure (2008)

To varying degrees, there is a level of humor preinstalled in absurdity, albeit sometimes morbid. Released in 2008, Igorrr’s Moisissure is a complex mix of glitched-out neoclassical, death metal, breakbeats and 1920s/30s pop music. Above all else, Moisissure is an electronic musique concrete hybrid; a grotesque showcase of eccentric source material and contrasting influences. Haunting layers of piano, pitched and digitally shredded drums, and the circling sound of flies will leave you feeling like you’re in a German expressionist Crash Bandicoot level.

It wouldn’t be entirely off-base to call it a bit of a novelty album. Moisissure did in fact come from the same person who created Chicken Sonata. But perhaps a more appropriate lens to view Moisissure through is that of a modernized take on surrealism.

However you frame it, Igorrr is not for everyone nor for every occasion. But if you’re looking for something genuinely spooky with just a degree of cartoon staging, this album is for you.

For fans of: Meat Beat Manifesto, Nurse With Wound, Flying Lotus

Like Igorrr? Give these a listen: Ningen Isu, skintape, Andrew Liles

TAKE VIBE: An Interview with Laurence Mason

Laurence Mason is the mastermind behind Take Vibe, a reworking of the Strangler’s Golden Brown (a post-punk meets baroque pop ode to heroin) in the style of Dave Brubeck’s Take 5 (written by saxophonist and composer Paul Desmond and first released in 1959 by Dave Brubeck Quartet). A demo and later de facto music video for the single reached viral status clocking in multi-million views and sparking interest in the opposing bands’ work within their counterpart’s audiences.

The original demo video, uploaded May 11th, 2020.

The following interview with Mason took place over email on April 21st, 2021.

The original demo was a hit, now with a little over 4 million views. Then the 7” is pressed and sells out. Did you know there would be such a strong audience out there for a Take Vibe type concept? What would you say is the make up of Take Vibe’s fanbase?

The only reason I thought people might click on it is because it’s the sort of thing I’d want to watch. That’s what an audience is really though isn’t it, a group of like-minded people who share a common interest with the creator. What I didn’t realize, and still struggle to comprehend, was how large that audience would be. The whole thing was very much a case of right place, right time – people seemed to be finding my video from lots of different places. There were visitors who had found it from searching for Dave Greenfield pretty early on, which of course was the initial reason I’d made it. Golden Brown had been used in an episode of a Netflix series called Umbrella Academy, and also in a film called Baby Teeth round about that time too. Then later on in the year it would have been Dave Brubeck’s 100th birthday so people were finding it through that.

In a roundabout manner of reaching out to you, I spoke with Jazz Room Records “Head Honcho” Paul Murphy. What was it like getting to work on the album? Could you run through the process of how the record was made?

The entire thing was done at my dining room table. I was moving house at the time of making it so I had limited equipment I could use, with most of it being packed away. This lo-fi setup was great because I wanted it to sound like it had been recorded 60 years ago, the idea of studio quality went out of the window and I was adding effects to make it sound grainy and old. For the release, the drums and bass were re-recorded so we weren’t using any samples as I had done on the original video, these were played by John Settle and Josh Cavanagh-Brierley. I ended up playing baritone sax for the B-side, “Walking On The Moon”. I’d been listening to Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights album so it was a little nod to that.

The jazz and post-punk connection has been made before, most notably with certain No Wave adjacent groups like Lounge Lizards, James Chance, and later with the lounge group Nouvelle Vague. Even then, I don’t believe there’s ever been a more direct connection between the two worlds, especially recently. Is this new terrain you’re hoping to explore further, or has the statement been made?

The connection I made was between the two songs (Take Five and Golden Brown) rather than looking at it from a perspective of connecting two genres. For a long time I’ve heard musical similarities between both tracks, and I’m not the first person to have done that, but the way I presented those similarities was the way I was hearing them. There’s definitely more terrain to explore in that field, but I’ve not yet found a pair of tunes that click together as well as those two did.

The idea of working with other people’s material, covering it, or of there being music ‘standards’ has really fallen out of popularity. How does a musical piece as a commercial entity transition into the greater cultural narrative, especially surpassing the original writer or performer?

Wow! Right, I’ll have a stab at that one… My thoughts are that it comes down to purpose versus right. Whether or not a statement (be it music, art, a campaign, etc.) has a right to exist in culture is entirely up to the individual who is on the receiving end of that statement, but its purpose to exist (and ultimately its success) is decided by society. The best example I can think of is Tracey Emin’s bed. On one side of the room you’ve got the people who say it really strikes a chord, the people who nominated it for a Turner prize, the people who actually bought it… Then on the other side you’ve got the people who say “Well that’s rubbish, I’ve got one just like that at home.” But its purpose in culture transcends what any individual thinks of it because society has decided that it has a place to exist in conversations, discussions, and arguments. So much so that on the mention of modern art, most people will bring up an image of an untidy bed in their minds. On the subject of using other people’s material for their creations, I think its use needs to be justified – what purpose does it serve in its new setting? Its right to be reused is up to the opinion of the consumer, but the decision of society on how well it has served its new purpose will govern its success in culture. That got deep.

Punk can in many ways be referred to as the great reset on music. With lower bars of entry, for both artists and consumers, how does jazz with a relatively high bar of entry stay relevant and keep forward momentum with younger audiences?

Look no further than YouTube for that – creators like Adam Neely, Aimee Nolte and Charles Cornell cater for young people wanting to learn about jazz, particularly jazz music theory, and it makes up an incredibly large audience on YouTube. Making something that previously seemed untouchable available to the masses is probably about as punk as it gets.

A little question I like to ask people I’ve just met, what are you listening to? No cool answers!

At the moment I’m listening to a lot of 90s RnB but that’s for a project I’m working on with someone. I’ve got Radio 6 on whenever I’m driving, I love Mary Anne Hobbs’ show.

Last but not least, ‘run what ya brung’ as they say where I’m from. Let the people know what you’re working on and where they can find you!

My next project involves a 100-year-old bass saxophone and some Leeds-based brass players. If that’s whet your appetite just type Laurence Mason into YouTube to find my channel, there’ll be some stuff up there soon about it.

You can find Laurence Mason’s Youtube account here or head on over to Jazz Room Records.

Wanting more strange jazz pastiche? Well you should check out Resident Sound’s Guide to The Fast Paced, Lighthearted World of DOOM JAZZ.

REVIEW: Frankie and The Witch Fingers – Sidewalk (2013)

Having never heard Frankie and The Witch Fingers before, I expected the proceeding 34 minutes to be a morose journey of cinematic surrealism. Even the album’s cover, a naked torso and head with eyes obscured by flowers laying atop rugged concrete doused in red, lead me to believe it would be some sort of Black Dahlia; a homage to the grotesque photography of Man Ray.

In a way, what I did hear was kinda grotesque. Sidewalk is yet another disappointing add-on of the 4th wave of garage rock, indistinguishable from all its contemporaries in the only genre to have become more of a parody of oneself than contemporary death rock. This album is in many ways the same as Shark?’s album Savior, also released in 2013, only with weaker songwriting and overindulgence of rock’n’roll antics.

The only redeemable tracks (out of 12) are Ferris Wheel, a slightly unique song with Nick Nicely or Holger Czukay-esque psychedelia and song My Love, in which the singer’s incessant wailing gives it a go at making me not mention the song entirely. Seemingly undeterred, over the rest of the album Frankie and The Witch Fingers give it their all at getting me to stop listening entirely! I didn’t. I kinda wish I did, but I didn’t.

Comparatively, originality came in spades from the original incarnation of garage rock grappling with beatlemania, its 80s and 90s counterparts reinvigorated by punk, and 00s by degrees of commercial accessibility and further artistic success. Why has garage rock become such a bad joke? Every guy and gal an Easy Rider wannabe, drenched in high-waisted denim and leather tasseled jackets. I once saw the frontman of a garage rock band leave after load-in, only so he could ride up to the venue on his motorcycle, inevitably pushing everyone’s collective set-times back by 15 minutes.

In an interview with Jesse Thorn in 2011, music cultural theorist and author Simon Reynolds observed that “…[ideas of] authenticity came from feeling that someone else has more of it than you, that you don’t have it. A lot of it relates to white middle class people feeling a little hollow in some way. They feel like other people are leading realer lives than them. In the early days of rock music, rock and pop, used to be a real-time thing, it would be like The Rolling Stones admiring Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters, relatively recent records. But now it’s much more likely to be located in the past…

…I thought things would be weirder and stranger in the 21st century than that. Some trouble with that assuming of authenticity through somebody else’s style is that you inevitably produce something that’s false. It doesn’t have anything of you in it, that’s the crucial difference I think.”

If you’re looking for the anti-chic records of days gone by, you can check out our article CHASING GHOSTS: An Interview With Lost RPM’s Jeffrey Harvey.

For fans of: Thee Oh Sees, Shark?, Caesars

Like Frankie and The Witch Fingers? Give these a listen: The Monarchs, Clinic, Didjits

REVIEW: Oxbow – Serenade in Red (1996)

The sonic equivalent to Sunset Boulevard’s floating-pool opening, the unhinged bordering on infantile murmurs of outspoken vocalist Eugene S. Robinson creep into frame. Waves form and relax without ever breaking. That is, until they do, and opening track Over slams into slide guitar swells and low horn rumbling. Drummer Greg Davis commands every puncturing beat, subsiding only while guitarist Niko Wenner and bassist Dan Adams quilt the listener in delicate mystique; every touch of the ride cymbal a looming threat (or promise) of what could come back at any moment.

Eugene S. Robinson’s vocals can be hard to explain. He subverts macho-man standards of barked yelling with something deeply human, unique while simultaneously universal. Never seeming to follow a basic verse to chorus lyrical delivery, Robinson could be considered an example of Cathy Berberian’s idea of New Vocality, sometimes sounding like the Russian futurists’ idea of Zaum, or dadaist sound poems. But the lyrics that do clearly present themselves upon first listening add yet another layer of eerie mystique. To take a line from Benjamin Louche’s blog, “[Serenade in Red] is worth a purchase should you wish to hear what it sounds like when a man turns himself inside out over the course of an album…”

Just when you’re starting to settle into the shadow of Serenade in Red’s opening half, midway track La Luna comes barging through the door like a violent behemoth. Oxbow makes you wait in the noise they buried you in. Constantly destroying any resemblance to a basic verse-chorus and so on structure.

An untitled track of cinematic ambience leads into Babydoll. Piano layers film noir cinematic atmosphere, broken by hard-boiled grey-scale psychedelia. Wenner’s guitar cries and wails, while Oxbow’s rhythm section creates Stravinsky-esque levels of dramatic rhythmic tension.

Oxbow is, among other things, a band not to fuck with. Working at their own pace, with their own sounds, even an Oxbow song of lesser quality holds more merit than most Melvins ‘hits’. Their willingness to experiment with poetry and uncommon instruments (from a rock stand point), while completely disregarding conventional structuring allows them to craft work with such emotional potency as to make most notable rock groups banal.

You can read a great Bandcamp Daily article about Oxbow here: Oxbow’s Avant-Rock Experiments With Light and Shadow.

If you enjoyed the more David Lynchian elements of Serenade in Red, you may enjoy our Guide to The Fast Paced, Lighthearted World of DOOM JAZZ.

For fans of: Chelsea Wolfe, Unsane, Swans

Like Oxbow? Give these a listen: Racebannon, Loudspeaker, Bohren & der Club of Gore

REVIEW: Cal Folger Day – At The Roots of The Stars (Solo Edition) (2017)

I once met Cal Folger Day at a show in NC. She was on tour with The Bonk from Ireland, herself an American living abroad for at least a couple of years as I remember. Another rainy weekday, which meant maybe 5 people showed up. I had just witnessed one of the best shows I had ever seen up to that point, and with the little cash I had that night I bought as much Cal Folger Day merch as I could.

Enter At The Roots of The Stars (Solo Edition); a download card made of thick bevel-cut mat board and printed on with rich pink and black inks. None of this is important to the musical qualities of the album itself, obviously. Consider it an appreciation for the artists who put a level of care into their download cards and, as of now, the only download card I have kept after use.

Cal Folger Day’s use of text-to-speech accompanying ‘vocals’ bring a level of subversiveness to At The Roots of The Stars. The integration of text-to-speech in music has been marred by meme-culture association and general reluctance in classically trained circles to integrate with new sounds or experiment. But Cal Folger Day commands a level of mastery over it. The text-to-speech ‘vocals’ add a dimension of emotional coldness and disdain which is repeatedly overcome by the warmth and humanity of Day’s dynamic singing.

“The text is a short play written in 1919 called ‘At The Roots of The Stars’ by Djuna Barnes. I have such an utterly unshakable confidence in the beauty of the language that the work every day of finding the most nimble, pleasant, natural melody for the words was terribly easy. As if I needed additional motivation, this feeling that I have, of being simply abashed that Djuna Barnes is today a relatively unknown name, lent a strong sense of justification and indeed obligation, less to her ghost than to myself and other readers/listeners,” wrote Cal Folger Day for An Áit Eile, a culture, society and ecology site based in Ireland.

At The Roots of The Stars (Solo Edition) is currently unavailable online. If ever given the chance to stream or get a copy of this album, take it. Until then you can check out Cal Folger Day’s site here or their Bandcamp where other beautiful works of theirs are available.

For fans of: Karen Dalton, Vashti Bunyan, Sibylle Baier

Like Cal Folger Day? Give these a listen: Myles Manley, András Cséfalvay, Concette Abbate

REVIEW: Myles Manley – AAA (2020)

Myles Manley’s 2020 EP release AAA is what Of Montreal and other indie bands of the late-naughts would have tried to be if they had carried higher artistic aspirations. A lush yet intimate recording, AAA is an intricate tapestry of emotion.

Myles Manley’s work is a great example of metamodernist ‘new sincerity’ within music. Humor briefly flourishes before being struck back down by underlying pain, all made very real by a high-degree of sonic intimacy. AAA is by no means a record that will be playing over the grandstands of your sporting locale. No, this one is best heard in your room, at night, speaker in reach. Opening track I Took On America And Won has been through my headphones a couple dozen times while wandering the local graveyards, and if you’re given the chance to do so I would highly recommend it.

Sometimes it can be difficult to understand if the lyrics should be interpreted in an abstract, surreal manner, or painfully direct and honest. While maybe not intended, this does allow for AAA to burn slowly with layered re-listening and reinterpretation. What is certain is that AAA is a triumph of the extended-play format, and ought to make it into your listening rotation should you find yourself alone anytime in the near future.

For fans of: Why?, The Angst, Sibylle Baier

Like Myles Manley? Give these a listen: Cal Folger Day, Concetta Abbate, András Cséfalvay

REVIEW: Concetta Abbate – Behind The Red Door (2016)

Opening with 30 seconds of unintelligible rumbling, it would be easy to believe you were listening to the sounds of the ocean; a strange experience for a live album.

Recorded live at Spectrum on April 30th of 2016, Behind The Red Door casts the listener forever in a sea of strange melancholia. The sounds of papers shuffling, room tone, and occasional rustling may, on paper, seem like the unfortunate consequences of recording live, but in the case of Behind The Red Door, every sound is perfectly in place. Violins, viola and cello are focal nearly throughout, though are briefly departed midway through for tracks Counting 1 & 2 before being reunited with the listener soon after. Concetta Abbate’s ability to to transition complete instrument substitutions with ease serves the album well, and keeps the listener in a state of wonderment.

The ebb and flow of the sweet and the eerie guide the listener with comforting force through the occasional vignette of near-gleeful tracks such as Dust, which retires itself to the melancholy from which it came.

Give yourself the gift of intimate listening, and take time to sit down to Concetta Abbate’s Behind The Red Door.

For fans of: Why?, Richard Hawley, Joanna Newsom

Like Concetta Abbate? Give these a listen: Cal Folger Day, Myles Manley, András Cséfalvay

REVIEW: András Cséfalvay – Funeral The Musical And Another Tabletop Opera (2013)

A creepy voice pronounces the word “prologue” in a way I’ve never quite heard it pronounced before. Maybe it’s British, maybe they’re born with it. No time for such sociolinguistical mysteries! Suddenly we’re off under waves of heavy but simple organ. Suddenly there it is again. A voice not entirely unlike Noel Fielding as the goth Richmond Avenal on sitcom The IT Crowd.

At times goofy, there is a level of showmanship that shouldn’t go unappreciated. A few motifs make up the entire work, differentiated by various keyboard settings. But even with the goofy lyrical speech of tracks such as Wormsong and National Ændthem (the latter of which being an intensely melodramatic reworking of The Star-Spangled Banner), Funeral The Musical is a genuinely spooky and haunting adventure in grief and death.

Funeral The Musical may not be such foreign territory for those in puppetry and carnival/freak show revivalist circles, but to those who haven’t lived in one of the hundreds of cities with a ‘Keep ____ Weird’ sticker, well, it may actually be pretty ground breaking stuff.

For fans of: Nurse With Wound, Cornbugs, the videos of David Firth

Like András Cséfalvay? Give these a listen: Myles Manley, Cal Folger Day, Concetta Abbate

REVIEW: Black Magnum – Sick of Living/Unwilling to Die (1995)

Sick of Living/Unwilling to Die is a not so subtle ode to the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer whose larger than life self-PR department helped fuel terror and intrigue throughout the 1960s/70s. A one-trick pony of face-value misogyny, Black Magnum’s inability to offer any type of substantial narrative, played ad nauseam, crosses into territory of uncreative fixation. Given its emotional weight, one would hope violence as artistic subject matter would be utilized better than a ‘dead baby nailed to 10 trees’-type joke.

It isn’t that violence can’t be used in this manner and work well. Bands like Ted Bundy’s Volkswagon and Theatre of Ice have used depictions and speculation of real life violence as a backdrop for topics such as the human condition, isolation, life and loss.

So what does Black Magnum have to offer us? Unfortunately not much. While opening track Oh Well offers heavy grunge riffs, sloppy fun drumming, and intriguing sample usage, Sick of Living/Unwilling to Die fails to deliver anything other than mundane songwriting and moronic lyrics.

Like Black Magnum? Maybe try one of these instead: Ted Bundy’s Volkswagon, Lubricated Goat, God Bullies