David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti’s early nineties side-project finally sees the light of day and it’s a miracle of experimental nighttime music

Black dogs haunt our collective dreams. They stalk through generational histories, guardians of thresholds or creatures beckoning us across. “The Black Dog Runs At Night” has become so familiar to me that it has the power of the most transcendent pop songs. My mind summons it regularly and eagerly. It’s one of those rare pieces of music that will leap into my head unbidden, already being sung before volition can intrude. This is American folk music that has cast its spell and made me helpless in its wake.

Studying the tracklisting of Fire Walk With Me back in the nineties, I noted that “The Black Dog Runs At Night” and “A Real Indication” were provocatively credited to “Thought Gang/vocal by Angelo Badalamenti”. These tracks always seemed to be outliers, yet perfectly attuned to FWWM as compared to the first, more musically consistent, Twin Peaks album. Thought Gang speak for the unease and dread of FWWM. The two pieces discombobulate the listener by existing outside in the daylight, under shadows across intersections and high school buildings.

A confession: FWWM is my favourite soundtrack. The opening trilogy of “Theme From Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me”, “The Pine Float” and “Sycamore Trees” pulls you down the well by whispering in your ear (there is no mention of black dogs at this stage) and can only barely keep the menace from rising off the surface. There’s so much beauty bleeding from horror across the entire soundtrack album that the listening experience removed from the film is magical in its own right. It’s one of the albums (not just soundtracks) that I’ve listened to the most over the years. I would listen to it on repeat at university in the late-nineties while reading or doing course work and it has continued to serve such purposes (it fueled lot of my Twin Peaks: The Return coverage too). Many other albums I have played while doing such activities are predominantly instrumental and can be integrated as backdrop. FWWM doesn’t fit comfortably with either criteria.

It may be the shifting mantra-like nature of “The Black Dog Runs At Night” that has allowed it to sneak past my defences – while consuming or commenting upon other pieces of art – and take up residence in my subconscious. Badalamenti’s voice is unrecognisable as he works his way through all the different permutations of ways to speak the title. It becomes more than invocation – a search for protection from the evil in the woods and a means to become one with them. The bass gurgles underneath it all, like some untamed supernal beast. The dogs are summoned / cast off / created out of pain and suffering / worshipped / made an everyday reality.

“A Real Indication” is more natural and easy going, rooted as it is in the daylight. But in some ways it can be regarded as odder, embodying those moments of Twin Peaks where Lynch’s distinct brand of humour operates on a surface level and he shines a momentary light on hope. It does, after all, accompany Bobby’s backwards walk-dance.

David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti recorded more than these two tracks across various sessions spanning 1992 and 1993. In fact they completed an entire album under the Thought Gang moniker, but it was frustratingly not released and seemed as if it never would be. The album therefore became a sort of Holy Grail to be dreamed of through distorted visions of black dogs and heard in phantom glimpses when taking lolling steps backwards. Fragments of the album surfaced in various forms over the years, culminating in multiple pieces featuring in Twin Peaks: The Return. Turns out that boded well, since this year the Sacred Bones label announced they would be putting it out – and here it is. If it seems a thing of dark magic that shouldn’t by rights exist in the physical realm, then let us simply worship whatever darkness brought it here. Or at least thank Lynch, Badalamenti and Sacred Bones for allowing the secret to become known. Because as beautiful as secrets can be, actually hearing the Thought Gang record in full is even more wonderful and mysterious.

What Thought Gang by Thought Gang isn’t is a mere period curiosity. Rather, it is way out there, Lynchian avant-jazz that could only be translated by Badalamenti. A heady stew of weirdness and odd behaviours; experimental mood passages and chicken dance inducing grooves; stories of the night and parodies of the daylight. This is the Lynch/Badalamenti collaboration at its most full-blown and irreverent. Unconcerned with sticking to enveloping dreams or turning up the drone works to drown out all else, these are fresh narratives and other worlds, with it all tying into the Lynchian multiverse.

What follows is an allegedly linear journey through the album.

Stalin Revisited

Rattling percussion akin to “Deer Meadow Shuffle” from the FWWM prologue, before the foreboding rustles up from underneath and a swarm of unease takes over. One cry out between worlds and… near silence penetrates then a lonesome rumble groans. As introductions go, it brilliantly sets out the moods and tones. On edge and oddly comforting at the same time.

Logic and Common Sense

A dark saxophone piece that one imagines Fred Madison playing in the club in Lost Highway when audiences aren’t watching. “I said, The hot ash of cigarettes like the men wearing suits, racing lawnmowers – it’s America!” declares Badalamenti from the early nineties. Yet the words seem truer than ever today, as abstract as they are.

One Dog Bark

The black dogs won’t go away or are constantly returning in unseen numbers. It comes off like a joint from the Pink Room club, Americana bled through endless nights with European witch-cults. Portals open and close as infinity drones away.

Woodcutters From Fiery Ships

“Pete saw the girl next door take off her clothes last night / And walk through her house nude / She went into a back room and Pete waited for her to come out / But she never did / Pete saw two children of the earth come out of the ground after that / A cat killed one of them and played with the other until one of its legs came off / The moon was half full”

A fresh Lynchian narrative that nevertheless has roots in various aspects of his body of work. Intriguingly it goes from pure Lynch – like one of his paintings come to life with words instead of movement – to Lynch drawing on mythology and tales of weird fiction. Perhaps Mark Frost was lending him books by Arthur Machen. The title of course points forwards and backwards to the Woodsmen of Twin Peaks – an idea that seemed to be percolating during the making of FWWM. The song is a mood poem of seeming free association which is really the discovery of hidden stories. The narrative feels like it is happening right here and now, as the song goes on.

A Real Indication

A world filled with stuff.

Jack Paints It Red

That voice? Sounds like David Lynch screaming out of a pocket universe. Backwards turning instruments and other voices free up the cosmic engines to allow a crossing over to occur. It’s claustrophobic as all hell and there ain’t ever going to be any getting out. But need there be?

A Meaningless Conversation

Dive into the primordial soup. Attempt to make language work. Negative and positive forces clash, make alterations to inner landscapes.

Frank 2000 Prelude

One and a half minutes is all it takes to descend from night into darkness. The clock is ticking, time is slipping away and out.

Multi-Tempo Wind Boogie

Back when Lynch painted a painting and heard a wind that moved the trees in it and decided to make moving pictures. Perhaps this is what he heard, might have been playing in his head. Or at least the primal version of that which he translated into actual sound with Badalamenti years later. Years later still and we may listen.

The Black Dog Runs At Night

Anthem of unease. Mantra for dreamers on the edge of nightmare. Report from the interior. Talismanic cry for protection and acceptance.

Frank 2000

The track time reads 16:42. The recording of time in the spaces in between is of course meaningless. Journey into the corridors above and around and underneath the Convenience Store. Take a deep dive through the edges of Twin Peaks: The Return – liminal spaces and white noise conjured into music. Wash up on the shores of consciousness where the black at the edge of an idea needs to present itself. “Frank 2000” is a glorious noisescape to get lost in. Pathways open up and close down. Visions of industrial wastelands and discarded backlots gain cosmic significance. It could have been recorded today, over twenty years ago, or a thousand years from now. This isn’t music adhering to prevalent cultural markers – it is sound wrenched from the elsewhere, pulled out of a well of future pasts.

Cross the midway point and insistent drums are a warning that something is trying to get in. Structure deteriorates and phantoms screech past – are let through, sieved out – allowing the sonics to plunge down into a field of black stones that almost look like dogs. The vision clears and there are intersections and low buildings with broken neon signage mapped out on top of each other. Dogs are nowhere to be seen, yet one can be heard insistently barking in the background.

Summer Night Noise

Reality is broken. There’s a beauty to its decrepitude. Eddies of time spill over, the overflow causing memories to be siphoned off and take on a life of their own. I am back where I grew up, going into the video store. Looking for a new release thriller and settling on Fire Walk With Me instead. About to be changed forever. It is 1992 or 1993.

sacredbonesrecords.com

Stewart Gardiner
Latest posts by Stewart Gardiner (see all)