Angelo Badalamenti - Blue Velvet (OST)

Soundtrack for Blue Velvet, David Lynch’s 1986 film that nods somnambulantly to the shadowy netherworld of film noir. Oedipal fantasies, finding a severed ear on your way home, voyeurism, crime and retribution, violence; they’re all there in abundance in the movie, a rotten sleazy commercialism set off against a set of strange situations that the edge of the seat is never far away from. And what soundtrack would suit such an experience? Of course a mix of orchestral pieces from composer and conductor Angelo Badalamenti inspired by Shoshtakovich’s 15th Symphony (which rumour has it Lynch played onset to create the ‘mood’) mixed up with trashy Hammond-led boogie and overblown baroque pop from Roy Orbison and Ketty Lester, suitable for any dive’s jukebox.

That awkward mix plays itself out in Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy’s rendition of the song Blue Velvet that melds beautifully and indeed hauntingly into Blue Star, a broken piece of vintage pop. Similarly, the track Going Down To Lincoln with its narrative audio shtick takes all of the previously-mused elements to create a perfectly disjointed travelogue.

Tracklist:

1. Main Title
2. Night Streets / Sandy and Jeffrey
3. Frank
4. Jeffrey's Dark Side
5. Mysteries of Love (French Horn Solo)
6. Frank Returns
7. Mysteries of Love (Instrumental)
8. Blue Velvet
9. Blue Star
10. Lumberton U.S.A
11. Going Down to Lincoln
12. Akron Meets the Blues
13. Honky Tonk Part I
14. In Dreams
15. Love Letters
16. Mysteries of Love