Remembering Angelo Badalamenti: 10 of his best musical moments, with and without David Lynch

When Angelo Badalamenti, composer and renowned collaborator of filmmaker-musician David Lynch, died Sunday at age 85 , he left behind some of the most evocative soundscapes known to cinema. Lustrous orchestration and little combo jazz sounds for Lynch works such as "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks" polished the senses while underscoring the grotesque beneath the surface of the American Dream. But there was so much more to Badalamenti than its radical cinematic vibe for a single filmmaker.

Here is a list of some of Angelo Badalamenti's best musical moments, with and without David Lynch.

The Slow Club scene in 'Blue Velvet' and 'Mysteries of Love' (1986)With an appearance as a pianist/bandleader at the Slow Club where the tortured Dorothy Valens (played by Isabella Rossellini) sings, Badalamenti begins his musical rendition of "Blue Velvet" as a sleazy lounge song, all blasting saxophone and offbeat beats, before moving on to the drenched, glistening "Blue Star." That crooked noir jazz vibe seeps into the interstitial music Badalamenti composed for "Blue Velvet," right through to "Mysteries of Love." Written with Lynch for jaw-dropping singer Julee Cruise, the ethereal "Mysteries" depicts pure, blinding white love. From that moment Lynch, Cruise and Badalamenti became a team, the holy trinity of existential doom-pop.

"Falling" by Julee Cruise and the theme song to "Twin Peaks" (1990 ) Badalmenti's descending guitar chords and free, fickle whistling synthesizer melody mimic the tumultuous springs of the great northwest mountains of Twin Peaks. But something sinister is surely brewing, a menace made deceptively angelic when Cruise's high-pitched vocals cut through Badalamenti's haunting instrumental version of the theme "Twin Peaks" — an unlikely pop hit that cracked the Top 20. from Billboard's Alternative Airplay.

“Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted” at Brooklyn Academy of Music (1989/1990) On stage at BAM during the New Music America Winter Festival, Lynch led a loud but celestial set of industrial soundscapes composed and performed by Badalamenti and sung by Cruise (don't forget dozens of rubber dolls lowered from the rafters with their burnt eyeballs). While many of the night's songs - such as "I Float Alone" - were part of Cruise's 1989 debut album, "Floating into the Night", the entirety of "Industrial Symphony" was released on VHS in 1990 and on DVD in 2008 as part of "David Lynch: The Lime Set".

The score of "Wild at Heart" and the introduction of Willem Dafoe as that "Bobby Peru" (1990) While Badalamenti's incendiary score for the manic love story of Sailor Ripley and Lula (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) is often stringy, subtly Morricone-like, and filled with sleazy machinations. Upside down, things slow down to a blur with a thunderous tom-beat and a Duane Eddy-style guitar twang when Lynch's most dangerous character, Bobby Peru, steps in. The devious and menacing moment is there, then gone, in a flash, but 22 years after its theatrical release, I still remember Badalamenti's sound fear festival.

The Pet Shop Boys Orchestration, "It Couldn't Happen Here" ( 1987 ) Layered on the Pet Shop Boys' 1987 album "Actually", Badalamenti's strings and horns transform Chris Lowe's arching melody and Neil Tennant's dry ice vocals – the very definition of synth pop – into something dramatically worthy of a lost 007 theme song, or at least an English high school graduation ceremony. Badalamenti then worked again with PSB on 1990's "This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave" and "Only the Wind", but their first cut was the deepest.