Today brings news that Johnny Jewel has surprise released a 2xLP called Themes For Television out now via Italians Do It Better/Cherry Pie. Fans of David Lynch and Mark Frost‘s Twin Peaks: The Return will remember Jewel’s band Chromatics taking the stage at the Roadhouse for a sultry performance of “Shadow” to close out the show’s two-part premiere. Twin Peaks: The Return also featured the musician/producer’s dreamy and desolate track “Windswept,” and it seems his nearly year long composition and recording process for the song was not without it’s own psychic turmoil. Jewel explains:
“The project began as a sonic exploration of the sounds I was hearing in my nightmares. I wanted to find my way out of the maze by focusing on beauty over fear � like the way the fractured sunrise looks in a dream.”
With his initial work on the tracks for the series begun without any images or scenes from the show, Jewel launched into a prolific creative spell that yielded six hours of sonic material based on his imagined take of just what The Return might be. Themes For Television culls together nearly an hour’s worth of material from those early efforts for a 21-track 2xLP. Sequenced and edited last year in Tokyo, and mostly instrumental in scope, it does also feature the cut “Saturday (Evening)” with vocals from Megan Louise of the Jewel-based project, Desire.
Below, you can stream Themes For Television in it’s entirety via Spotify, and also watch a video for the track “Red Door” directed by Radka Leitmeritz and shot by Rene Hallen at the Grand Hotel Evropa in Prague. The Hitchcock-inspired visuals star Eva Klimkova.
