Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch’s composer on Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and more, dies aged 85 | Music | The Guardian:

Angelo Badalamenti, the acclaimed composer who created haunting music for David Lynch projects including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, has died at the age of 85.

Lynch and Badalamenti would become close friends and collaborators, working together on Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive. Badalamenti also appeared on screen as the coffee-loving gangster Luigi Castigliane in Mulholland Drive, and played piano with Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet.

The classically trained musician also worked with the likes of Nina Simone, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, Liza Minnelli, Pet Shop Boys and LL Cool J over his varied career, and composed themes including Inside the Actors Studio and the torch theme for the 1992 Olympic Games.

On 1986’s Blue Velvet, his first collaboration with Lynch, he was brought in to work as a vocal coach for Rossellini. Lynch asked him to write a tune for the score, saying “let it float like the tides of the ocean, make it collect space and time, timeless and endless”, which became the song Mysteries of Love, performed by Julee Cruise. Eventually Lynch tasked him with writing the film’s score, asking for Badalamenti to be “like Shostakovich, be very Russian, but make it the most beautiful thing but make it dark and a little bit scary”.