Mulholland Drive: Original Motion Picture Score [Soundtrack]

Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 9, 2001)
• Original Release Date: October 9, 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Label: Milan Records
• ASIN: B00005PJ9K
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #76,417 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Track Listings

1. Jitterbug

2. Mulholland Drive

3. Rita Walks/Sunset Boulevard/Aunt Ruth

4. Diner

5. Mr. Roque/Betty's Theme

6. The Beast

7. Bring It On Home

8. I've Told Every Little Star

9. Dwarfland/Love Theme

10. Silencio

11. Llorando (Crying)

12. Pretty 50s

13. Go Get Some

14. Diane And Camilla

15. Dinner Party Pool Music

16. Mountains Falling

17. Mulholland Drive/Love Theme

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Director David Lynch's affection for kitschy lounge music and emotionally overwrought mid-century pop has long since proven to be more than trend or irony; indeed, it's often the uneasy spiritual axis of his films. The soundtrack of Mulholland Dr. turns on the usual Lynchian motifs (the brooding atmosphere of Angelo Badalamenti's ominous synth-and-orchestra cues tossed with a dash of Lynch's own off-center compositions), yet manages to evoke a sense of foreboding that's distinctly its own. Badalamenti leads off with a curve, the nervous orchestra swing-romp "Jitterbug," before descending into a dark soundscape that becomes murkier and more avant-goth at every turn. Bubbling through that morass are pop nuggets variously cheesy (Dave Cavanaugh's lounge-ready "The Beast"), lugubriously bluesy (Sonny Boy Williamson's take on Willie Dixon's "Bring It On Home"), and alternately innocent ("I've Told Every Little Star") and liturgical ("Llorando"). Three tracks of the director's own (cowritten with John Neff) skulking Lounge Music from Hell ratchet up the tension even further; it's the perfect garnish for this darkly delicious film-music cocktail. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you liked the movie, experience the music again...., February 6, 2002

By	Eric McCalla "reviewboy" (Denver, COLORADO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch haves produced an eerie and atmospheric soundtrack for Mullholland Drive. It's not quite the same effect as sitting in a darkened theatre, watching the opening moments with the black limo driving through the Hollywood Hills, but it's as close as you'll get.

Like the movie, the soundtrack has its darker and lighter moments. The opening music is lush and dark, setting the mood for the entire album.

The mixture of 50s pop, blues, jazz and orchestral colors makes for a varied listening experience, and one you can experience many times over, and feel differently about it each time.

Of course the piece de resistance is Rebecca Del Rio's performance of LLORANDO (Crying, by Roy Orbison) which I didn't recognize at first, because my Spanish is not that strong. What a performance in the film, and its haunting beauty IS captured on the recording.

Excellent!!

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good music from the best film of 2001, January 25, 2002

By	Adrien Begrand (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) - See all my reviews

Mulholland Drive is David Lynch's latest in a long line of supercool freakout flicks, so it should be no surprise that the soundtrack to his latest movie is also more of the same. Are there lengthy ambient synth scores by Angelo Badalamenti? Check. Shuffling blues tunes? Check. Creepy guitar instrumentals that sound like a possessed Dick Dale? Check. A resurrected early Sixties pop nugget? Check. And what about the token Roy Orbison song? Check that too, amigo.

What ultimately makes it all work this time around is the fact that Mulholland Drive is the best film Lynch has ever made, and the music coalesces perfectly with his mesmerizing visuals. The dark, twisted 'Jitterbug' kicks the film (and the cd) off with an unsettling feeling (as well as a slight hint towards the denouement), while the next four songs by Badalamenti add to the sense of foreboding. The inclusion of the bubblegummy 'I've Told Every Little Star', placed in the movie and cd where it is, somehow adds to the feeling that everything isn't quite right. The movie's most unforgettable moment, the a capella performance of 'Llorando' (a Spanish version of Orbison's 'Crying'), is also the soundtrack's highlight, bringing the movie's powerful scene back to the mind of the listener. After that, I think it's pretty safe to say the movie gets a little nutso, and suitably, so does the music, with three of Lynch's own compositions making up most of the rest of the disc, before Badalamenti concludes things with his amazing 'Love Theme'.

If the soundtrack has a fault, it's that Badalamenti's atmospheric compositions go on too long ('Dwarfland/Love Theme' is ambient overkill), but that's why you're listening to the soundtrack, to relive such a mindbending film, so it's easy to let it slide. With music as freaky as the movie itself, the Mulholland Drive soundtrack does the job nicely, and only makes you want to see it again in an attempt to sort it all out...or at least to figure out what the deal is with that cowboy dude...

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ambient creepiness; melancholy, February 11, 2003

By	Wing J. Flanagan (Orlando, Florida United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The sound track for Mulholland Drive, like the film itself, deftly veers between horror, farce, and tragic love story. With characteristic audacity, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch weave a soundscape that pulls the listener from one mood to the next with little warning. This is music as sound effects, or perhaps sound effects as music; it's hard to tell. Even the more melodic tracks ("Jitterbug", "Mulholland Drive", the achingly beautiful "Diane and Camilla") have an undercurrent of hallucinatory kinesthesia, shot through with black veins of dread.

The spookier tracks ("Diner", "Dwarfland/Love Theme", and especially "Mountains Falling") sound as though stirred up from some pit of cold, dark water in the basement of the psyche. OK, so that's a little purple. But that's what they sound like.

Then there are the transparent little ditties tossed in from the film's contextual music cues - "I've Told Every Little Star", "The Beast", and "Bring it on Home". They provide much needed contrast and context for the original tracks, leavening the mix with a dash of satire. The weakest of these is Lynch's own "Dinner Party Pool Music", which is as bland and generic as something generated by Band In a Box. But then, that may have been the intent - to create a deliberately flavorless pastiche of the sort that the "Hollywood types" lampooned in that sequence would likely enjoy. That same sequence contains a more striking piece with a pulsing bass beat and trippy syncopated percussion section that is sadly missing from this CD.

Of course, I feel compelled to also mention the fine a capella work of Rebekah Del Rio for her rendition (in Spanish) of Roy Orbison's "Crying". It comes at point in the film when the Bunuel-O-meter is all the way in the red, and serves to ground the very surreal sequence in a solid framework of human emotion.

In all, Mulholland Drive is a CD certainly worth owning for David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti fans.