Tag Archives: Angelo Badalamenti

Booth and the Bad Angel is a collaboration between Tim Booth and film composer Angelo Badalamenti released in June 1996.  Two singles were released from the album, I Believe in My 1996 and Fall In Love With Me in May 1998.

The collaboration came about as a result of a question posed by the organisers of Channel 4’s Live At The Dome when Tim was asked who he would most like to work with. The wheels were put in motion although it took two years and transatlantic phone calls before the two met. Initial recording took place in a six-week period at the end of 1995 with more sessions in London in early 1996 including Bernard Butler, ex-Suede guitarist, on guitar.

Reviews

I-Music.com by Mike Pattenden

Booth And The Bad Angel is the name given to the collaborative project by vocalist Tim Booth and composer Angelo Badalamenti. Booth is perhaps best known as the vocalist for the pop band James (Laid, Wah Wah ) and Badalamenti as the man behind the moody, atmospheric soundtracks of “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet,” as well as for his work with Marianne Faithfull and Julee Cruise (Floating Into The Night ). As the story has it, the two artists met up on a now-defunct British music show whose intention was to bring together musicians from disparate genres. Well, by all accounts, it worked, because not too terribly long after that chance meeting, this unlikely pair set out to make a record.

Together, Booth and Badalamenti have crafted a highly-textured collection of tracks. Rich, lush and ornate, the project successfully combines Badalamenti’s tendency toward the tragic and darkly ethereal with Booth’s energetic and upbeat pop sensibilities. The opening number, “I Believe,” is a catchy tune featuring ex-Suede Bernard Butler (who also receives mixing and production credit on nearly half of the tracks) on guitar and percussions. Other tracks include the dreamy, floating, “Fall In Love With Me,” (“I hear the sound of moons falling/surrender to this charm”); the poppy, hook-laden “Old Ways;” the hypnotic, psychedelic “Life Gets Better;” and the steamy, rollicking “Butterfly’s Dream,” (“Drag my lips across these mouths/Drag my hips across this crowd . . . I’d love to sleep/with the whole town”). In this unique collaboration, Booth and Badalamenti take various elements of their respective musical worlds and meld them into something entirely new. The end result is an engaging, atmospheric pop album.

Sunday Times

Pop seems to be riven with collaboration fever at the moment, as everyone from Tricky to the Prodigy goes in search of ever more unlikely people to work with.  As far as this goes, Tim Booth, whose day job is as singer with the English group James, has outdone them all.  Angelo Badalamenti is best known for having composed the ethereal soundtracks to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, and his capture by Booth is quite a coup.  On the whole, Booth and the Bad Angel sounds more like a James record than a Badalamenti one, veering as it does between up-tempo pop and often self-consciously dark slow-burners.  For all that, it does contain traces of the composer’s textural genius – he thinks of his sound as “tragically beautiful” – in the ambient sweep of a synthesised string section here, the tentative lilt of a piano line there.  Essentially though, this is a souped-up rock album, a James album with extra weird bits and a few good tunes, and it’s pleasant enough.

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In theory, this could have been complete arse.  After three years’ silence, James singer Booth has hooked up with veteran composer Badalamenti for a semi-improvised ambient pop opus, with Brian Eno and Bernard Butler coming aboard halfway through.  Imagine all those egos in one studio.  Passengers 2, anyone?

And yet this is a glorious triumph of pop over pomp.  James were headed towards these wide-open horizons anyway, but cutting loose seems to have freed Booth to truly soar.  From the moment he swoops in over the anthemic ‘I Believe’ – wherein Badalamenti’s soft, ambient waves lap mellifluously against Butler’s leisurely twanging – Tim’s feet barely touch the ground. “Why be a song when you can be a symphony?” the singer beams, encapsulating the widescreen feel of this entire album.

Bathed in the same spectral half-light Badalamenti employed for his Twin Peaks and Julee Cruise projects, Booth croons euphoric lullabies like ‘Please Fall in Love’ with woozy grandeur.  In the slinky funk-out ‘Dance of the Bad Angels’ he smooches like an indie George Michael, while the majestic final track, ‘Hands in the Rain’, twinkles into infinity, melting away to a warm afterglow.

But all is not lofty detachment here.  Booth’s lyrics still babble about healing, inner children, astrology and other such New Age gubbins, though thankfully they’re undercut with a lusty exuberance and a self-mocking humour.  Even sex, that force of nature which has little Timmy running scared on ‘Laid’, is heartily embraced in the frazzled mantra ‘Butterfly Dreams’, with Booth cheerfully crooning: “I’d love to sleep with the whole town”

This is a mighty album, with only one or two flawed experiments – and hopefully, Booth will maintain this standard on future James albums.  In the meantime, just sit back and wallow in that rare phenomenon, a truly inspired collaboration.

• Butterfly’s Dream :1996
• Dance Of The Bad Angels :1996
• Fall In Love With Me (aka Fall In Love) :1996
• Hands In The Rain :1996
• Heart :1996
• Hit Parade :1996
• I Believe :1996
• Life Gets Better :1996
• Old Ways :1996
• Rising :1996
• Stranger :1996

• Fall In Love With Me (Booth And The Bad Angel)
• I Believe (Booth And The Bad Angel)

• There Will Not Be Another Booth And The Bad Angel Album – The Express
• Discover.de – Interview with Tim Booth and Angelo Badalamenti (German)
• Booth’s In A Bad Way – City Life
• I’m Sleeping With Your Daughter – Q
• Wake Up Booth – NME