David Lynch completed shooting the new Twin Peaks episodes he and Mark Frost are producing for a Showtime release early next year. The singular TV show had its brilliant but inconclusive-feeling initial run in 1990 and 1991 on ABC, and it was enough of a sensation to land Lynch on the cover of TIME, identified as “The Wild-at-Art Genius” behind the show. It’s beyond question that Lynch and Co. helped stretch the boundaries of what a TV narrative could be, at a time when network television was practically the only game in town.

Around the same time that the shooting on the new episodes wrapped, the excellent blog Welcome to Twin Peaks noticed that the whopping 217-person cast list released by the show contained a goodly number of people with a decent musical pedigree—or better. For instance, Trent Reznor, Eddie Vedder, Sky Ferreira, and Sharon Van Etten are all listed as cast members, while actors such as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Monica Bellucci, Richard Chamberlain, and Balthazar Getty have released music in their time.

From these facts was birthed a tremendously fertile idea—why not cobble together a mixtape that is limited to the people on the cast list that evokes the peculiarly malevolent and down-home acoustical vibe that Angelo Badalamenti created for the original show? And that’s exactly what Welcome to Twin Peaks did.
 

 
We all know what Twin Peaks music sounds like. Starting with the spare guitar notes with the saccharine synth tones from the show’s opening theme, the show’s music evoked a just the right Bizarro World of melodrama that just might produce a random lady clutching a log or a cryptic dream dwarf.

Obviously, Nine Inch Nails and Pearl Jam is fair game for the project, and the mix brilliantly stretches as far back as 1962 for Richard Chamberlain’s tremendous cover of the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” How they missed the masterpiece that is Jim Belushi & The Sacred Hearts’ 1998 album 36-22-36 is a mystery for the ages.
 

Track listing:
The Cactus Blossoms (Jack Torrey & Page Burkum) – Powder Blue
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – It Catches Up With You
Sky Ferreira – Night Time, My Time
Chrysta Bell – Real Love
Richard Chamberlain – All I Have To Do Is Dream
Robert Jones (Caleb Landry Jones) – But She Don’t Really Mind
The Veils (Finn Andrews) – Candy Apple Red
Trent Reznor – Videodrones & Questions
Chromatics (Ruth Radalet) – Last Wish
Pearl Jam (Eddie Vedder) – Nothing As It Seems
Au Revoir Simone (Annie Hart, Erika Forster & Heather D’Angelo) – Let The Night Win (C U P remix)
How To Destroy Angels (Trent Reznor & Mariqueen Maandig) – Hallowed Ground
Jennifer Jason Leigh – Almost Blue
Chromatics – Disintegration
Solardrive (Balthazar Getty) – Where We Go From Here
Chrysta Bell – Swing With Me
Sharon Van Etten – You Know Me Well
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – What Have We Done To Each Other?
Au Revoir Simone – Boiling Point
Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor & Robin Finck) – 8 Ghosts I
Nine Inch Nails – 5 Ghosts I
Rebekah Del Rio – No Stars
Julee Cruise – I Float Alone
Monica Bellucci – I Can’t Help Falling In Love
Eddie Vedder – Dream A Little Dream

 
Here’s the mix. The selections are uniformly spot-on, so you can treat yourself to a thoroughly Lynchian hour-plus.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Damn good’ postcard portraits of ‘Twin Peaks’ characters
Play the Twin Peaks video game, ‘Fire Dance with Me’