Since Twin Peaks aired on ABC in the beginning of the 1990s, beside the critical and national acclaim it has reached in the US, it has managed to capture an international cult following. In the meantime, the soundtracks of the TV series and the following feature film, which were produced by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti and composed by the latter, have experienced a similar reception process. Apart from the Grammy Award which was won by Badalamenti in 1991, the music of this idiosyncratic universe has separately attracted a somewhat distinctive attention among the fans. However, this attention would not stay limited within the confines of appreciation for some enthusiasts who would intend to carry their interest to the level of appropriation, and in the next period, echoes of Twin Peaks would begin to be heard in Europe as a new music sub-genre which would semi-popularly be known as dark jazz.
This paper aims to understand the influence of a TV production on the emergence and development of a new musical phenomenon. Approaching the issue with relational musicological concerns, the paper proposes to look at a specific journey that jazz has taken thanks to one of its encounters with the screen. This is a journey that can be considered not only as border-crossing, but also as passing through different taste spheres. Moreover, the paper reasons about possible methods for further research on dark jazz. Considering the fact that 2017 is the year in which a whole book dedicated to Twin Peaks’ music is published by Bloomsbury through its 33 1/3 series and the TV series makes a come-back, I believe this is an appropriate time to foster a scholarly discussion on musics that are considered as post-Twin Peaks in many aspects.