ABSTRACT
The opening line in the first episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, spoken by Carel Struycken’s character, asks FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper to “Listen to the sounds.” Throughout the third season of Twin Peaks, writer, director, and sound designer David Lynch and his collaborators deploy a complex combination of sound and visuals in order to depict mysticism, the impossible and bring to life the birth and spread of evil in the Twin Peaks universe. In this chapter we explore how Lynch makes use of intricate sound design, score, existing source music, and music performed within the diegesis to articulate and distinguish the real-world geography from the supernatural spaces of the series, and how sonically distinct liminal spaces connect these places within a rhizomic narrative. The series as a whole makes use of intertextual connections to conventional and experimental film form and demonstrates how a complex relationship between sound and visuals lends an otherworldly quality to The Return and allows the series to further extend established Lynchian worlds. This chapter uses the words of David Lynch, composer Angelo Badalamenti and sound supervisors Dean Hurley and Ron Eng together with critiques of Lynch’s work, to better understand the complex, alienating world of Twin Peaks, and the significance of sound and music within the construction of place, space, character, and narrative in the most recent series.
