David Lynch

David Lynch died last week aged seventy eight, as I'm sure most of the readers of this blog will know. He was a visionary artist, the director of film and TV that redefined what film and TV could be. His films- Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway- all lit up the screen and took storytelling and cinema somewhere else. The dreamlike world he created, a sense of the surreal and the strange being just around the corner, live in the memory long after the credits have rolled. Twin Peaks reimagined what television could be and do. 

Music was crucial to Lynch's film and visual world. Blue Velvet, 1986's psychological thriller/ film noir, was based around the Bobby Vinton song of the same name and any reference to the film- the cover of The Face magazine above for instance- will have the song playing in my head instantly...

Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet is one of those 50s songs that has a weird, trippy edge to it regardless of its association with David Lynch's film. It's place in the film just made it even more so. 1990's Wild At Heart, a black comedy/ road movie/ romance/ crime spree film, made a star out of Chris Isaak and his song Wicked Game.

Wicked Game

Wild At Heart took Elvis, the 1950s, a snakeskin jacket, suggestions of the Wizard Of Oz and the stars Laura Dern and Nicholas Cave and wrapped them in a love story freak out. I saw it at the cinema in 1990 while a student in Liverpool, an afternoon screening that had us blinking in the daylight when we came out. My then girlfriend saw it with me and hated it (and made it clear during the film's duration)- it was very much a film that split opinions.

Twin Peaks is unimaginable without the soundtrack, not least Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti's song Falling, that plays over the opening titles, a song that creates a dream world of its own and that sets the tone for everything that follows. 

Falling

It's been sampled ever since its release in 1990 as have other parts of the Twin Peaks soundtrack and world. I've posted this before but its worth posting again- a Bedford Falls Players track from last year called Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams that takes Kyle MacLachlan and Twin Peaks and builds a wonky, electrifying cosmic house world around them. Find it here. 

David Lynch was a music obsessive and frequently made and released his own music too, the '50s influences ever present along with his enduring love of the blues. Many of them are at Lynch's own Bandcamp page, the physical copies largely sold out but digital available. This one, The Big Dream, is the title track from a 2013 album, twelve modern blues songs, Lynch and his co- writer/ musician David Hurley (with Lykke Li singing on a bonus song) and a Bob Dylan cover (The Ballad Of Hollis Brown). Dusty blues, like some 21st century crossover of Tom Waits, Bobby Vinton, Jack White and Link Wray, but ultimately entirely Lynchian. 

The whole album is at Bandcamp too along with various other Lynchworld releases.

RIP David Lynch.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Bedford Falls Players

Apparently it's Sunday. It's difficult to tell what day it is at this time of year at the best of times, the period between Christmas and New Year, but it's been even harder this year. On Christmas Eve night I came with norovirus (I think) and have been wiped out ever since. I'll spare you the details but I was out of action all through the Christmas period. Lots of lovely food and drink in the kitchen and I've been on bread, water and rice. I can't remember the last time I had such an alcohol free Christmas but it would have been in the mid- 1980s. 

Today's Sunday mix features the work of Bedford Falls Players aka Mark Cooper. It's fitting for this time of year, if a week or two late, because the town of Bedford Falls is the fictional setting for It's A Wonderful Life, the Christmas film everyone goes to at some point. Also, deeply shamefully and embarrassingly, BFP have released at least three great tracks this year and I missed all of them out of my end of year list last week, an oversight for which I can only apologise. In any sane 2024 list the tracks Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams, Beautiful Chaos and Cosmic Cascade would all feature strongly. 

Bedford Falls Players music is giddy and effervescent, the spirit of late 80s and 90s dance music filtered through dub and techno with a real life affirming quality, a bounce and musicality that makes it  ajoy to listen to. Mark's remixes of other people, three contained below, are always outstanding too. In fact, his remixes of Matt Gunn's Learning Through Loops was one of my favourite tracks of 2023 so how I missed his music from this year's list is beyond me. All of the BFP back catalogue can be bought at Bandcamp. 

Fifty Five Minutes Of Bedford Falls Players

• Marmite Marimba
• Railton Ruckus (BFP Remix)
• Boatface (BFP Remix)
• Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams
• Learning Through Loops (BFP Remix)
• Cosmic Cascade
• Beautiful Chaos (Dub Mix)

Marmite Marimba is from the Three EP, a 2023 release. It starts out buzzing, like a machine glitching, and then the marimba melodies start to pick away on top. It rises and falls, rises and falls, stuttering bass and keys sliding in and out, crunching drums piling in, repeating itself but always shifting too. Lovely stuff. The BFP remix of Matt Gunn's Learning Through Loops is from the same EP. Almost exactly a year ago I said this about it- 'a gorgeous Balearic tune with squelchy bass, chuggy drums and a guitar part that sounds like something John Squire put down on tape at Battery Studios back in early 1989 when recording the Stone Roses debut lp and then never used. Over the top of this Mark has laid a vocal sample taken from TV, a voice talking about sound waves, binary problems in quantum systems, core computers, voodoo, 'shit like this', hidden variables, time travel, determinism, party tricks and the voice of Jesus. It's been played constantly round here, one of my favourite tracks of 2023, and you should all get on it'. I have no reason to change any of that one year later. 

Railton Ruckus is by Rude Audio, one of several remix exchanges between the two parties. Railton Road is/ was the front line in Brixton and was the title track of a 2021 Rude Audio EP. The BFP signature sounds, marimbas and percussion carrying the melodies working their way through it and then everything dropping out for dub space and timbales, Weatherall and Nicolson style c.1991. 

Boatface is by Duncan Gray from 2022. The BFP remix is a wonky Buzz Aldrin and the Beastie Boys sampling joy that could go on twice as long and not be too long. 

Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams came out earlier this year, Kyle MacLachlan goes cosmic disco, some Twin Peaks chords and a rattling drum machine. 

Cosmic Cascade is also from 2024, a nine minute ride into the cosmos with chunky drums, wobbly bass and twinkling, interstellar keys and synths. 

Beautiful Chaos (Dub Mix) came out in March '24, a tune that builds and builds, piano, keys, acid squiggles, washes of synth and more of those twinkling synths Mark does so well. The drop out at five minutes, sampled voice and then bass re- entry is worth the price of admission alone. It is stratospherically good and clearly should have been in my singles of 2024 list, somewhere towards the top end. My bad, as they say. 

Beautiful Chaos

This is the most recent digital release from Bedford Falls Players, the name used the magnificent DJ/ producer/ musician Mark Cooper (whose Friday night radio show at The 365 is essential if you're staying in on a Friday night). Beautiful Chaos (Dub Mix) came out a month ago and caused a little stir when Mark Ratcliff played it at The Golden Lion on Saturday night. It's eight minutes of electronic cosmic disco from Maidenhead, a tune that twists and turns, that has a kick and an energy but also moments of titular beauty, twinkling synth lines, long chord washes, burbling bass, piano and keys, acid squiggles, the full shebang. Get it at Bandcamp for just £1.25. 

Mark has a thing for Twin Peaks. A few weeks ago I posted his recent epic Agent Cooper's Coffee Dreams along with Julee Cruise's song Falling and Angelo Badalamenti's Pink Room. Bedford Falls Players have previously released an EP on Night Noise called Moon (back in 2017), four more Twin Peaks related musical excursions including this remix of Chapter 3 of Agent Cooper's Black Lodge  Excursion by Duncan Gray. Moon is here. 

Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams

Markus Cooper, the man behind Bedford Falls Players, released one of my favourite EPs last year, the Three EP with Marimba Marmite, his remix of Matt Gunn's Learning Through Loops and Matt's remix of BFP's Chug Hug. Markus has followed it this week with a seven and a half minute excursion into David Lynch goes cosmic disco territory called Agent Cooper Coffee Dreams. It fizzes with energy and invention, synths crackling over a rattling drum machine, some familiar chord sequences and a sense of possibilities. The titular Agent Cooper- Kyle MacLachlan's Dale Cooper- turns up in sampled form. It's a fantastic piece of music, life enhancing and giddily ecstatic. You can buy it here for just £1.25. 

Twin Peaks was already the home to some memorable music, David Lynch's dreamworld mystery detective series having music stitched into from Julee Cruise's song that played over the titles to the music created by Angelo Badalamenti for the soundtrack. Julee's song Falling came out in 1989, a year ahead of the series starting, on her album Floating Into the Night (an album Lynch and Badalamenti co- wrote). The song is built around a very distinctive low end guitar part that harks back to the 50s but is smothered in a very 80s ambient/ Cocteau Twins sound, with Julee's voice a spectral presence. 

Falling

Angelo Badalamenti's The Pink Room soundtracked one of the most memorable scenes from the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Laura Palmer enters a world known as the Pink Room, a rabbit hole of hallucinations and sensory overload. 

The Pink Room

Go

He's a funny character Moby- the veganism and the Christianity along with the love of 80s punk and hardcore, the flitting from one genre to another, the hardcore punk album and the multi-million selling Play where every song was licensed to sell one product or another. It makes him difficult to pin down, which is possibly the intention. Maybe it makes him just like the rest of us, a bag of interests and contradictions rather than a cartoon or a one dimensional media person. It may also explain why I only have a sporadic interest in his career. Yesterday's This Perfect Life (from 2013) being the first time that I'd really paid any attention since Play (1999) although he did record a cover version of New Dawn Fades with New Order for the Twenty Four Hour Party People film. But I was pretty unfussed by that. The first time I encountered him was on his 1990 rave single Go, a classic of its kind. Sampling Laura Palmer's Theme from Twin Peaks and vocals snatched from Tones On Tail and Jocelyn Brown it  reached the top ten in the UK. The video is very 1990 and I don't have the song on my hard drive right now so it'll have to do for today.