Dream team: Chrystabell on collaborating with David Lynch on Cellophane Memories

Named after a Coleridge poem about an eerie encounter in the woods, Chrystabell might have seemed destined to become one of David Lynch’s closest collaborators. She was introduced to him by an agent in the late 1990s, and although it took a few years for their partnership to get going, it has since produced music for Inland Empire (2006), two albums and an EP. Despite her limited acting experience, Lynch also persuaded her to take the part of FBI agent Tammy Preston in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017).

How did you both settle on the mood and sound of Cellophane Memories?

Chrystabell: I don’t think anything like this can be intentional. It’s born only from the realm of the unknown. We were in a process that looks like songwriting and listening to music and then feeling inspired in the moment, and then David’s writing down some lyrics. I’m singing them one moment to the next, and then we’ve got this thing that’s created from a few takes of this, a few cycles. But the next step was the process of experimental editing that David was doing. That’s really where the feel of this album emerged quite accidentally. I’d like to think there was the hand of destiny but really, we’re just kind of fucking around.

Is that how your collaborations always work: he does the writing and you sing the melody? There was never any question about you writing some lyrics?

Nope. When David first started making music, Angelo [Badalamenti] needed someone to write lyrics, and that was the capacity in which David was contributing: David wrote these lyrics, Angelo had this beautiful music, but I think their magic was made when all of it was coalescing. So I think David established that early on: that his music was his lyrics, and that’s the way it’s always been.

The songs feel like poetic little scenes. They create images in the head, almost like scenes from a film.

For sure. Like vignettes. That might give them a bit more structure than I feel when I’m listening to them. There’s a bit of an ungroundedness. These songs are maybe more like the feeling you have after you see whatever it is. That’s why we were leaning into the idea of something transparent or cellophane, because there was a bit of an untethered quality to the music. It had this quality of being about to take flight and dissipate; this kind of gateway quality.

Would he give you directions while you were recording?

Sometimes. I think a lot of the directions have come over the 25 years of previously working together. I’ve been infused already. That is something quite precious that comes from long-term collaborations: in the most precious moments, you have a telepathic communication that is gleaned from all of the years of previous experience. 

I was not so sure of myself because the quality of experimentation really encourages you to do a bit of leaping into the abyss. If it’s comfortable, you’re really not pushing it enough. So this was a lot of leaping into the void, which was really only possible because of the established connection. I knew David would give me direction the moment he felt like I was getting off course, but maybe there was also more trust in what was occurring because it was an experiment.

You started out in the swing band 8 ½ Souvenirs. Did you move into this darker, dream-pop sound because you started collaborating with David, or were you already quite immersed in that aesthetic?

It was very much aligned with my personality, but David was my first foray into dream pop. I went directly from 8 ½ Souvenirs to my first meeting with David. I was really looking for what the next iteration of my musical reality would be. 8 ½ Souvenirs was hot jazz, and it was such a great education, but I wasn’t feeling this personal loyalty to continue doing that music. I was open to whatever was next, and David was the next person that came into my life. We started making a record the day that we met, but that didn’t come out until over a decade later. 

Cellophane Memories is quite a different sound to your previous album collaboration, 2011’s This Train. There are no beats. Was that always the idea?

We were in David’s musical library enjoying listening to music, because David has years of musical experiments from the studio with creating with [studio engineer] Dean Hurley. But he also had pieces of music from Angelo Badalamenti that Angelo had given him over the years. We were listening to all of these things, and we’d hear something and be like, “Oh, this is really beautiful.” And then David would write some lyrics and say, “Let’s try something. Let’s experiment.” And then I improvise what I think is total bullshit, and I do it two or three, four times. And then David does his experimental editing to it, and that’s how things unfolded.

The variation was that David was also composing music on the spot and using a synthesiser to create compositions that would then be the foundation for the music of the record. 

Am I right in thinking that you’re managing Lynch’s studio now that Dean Hurley has left?

Managing is a strong word. Dean is a very gifted engineer, musician and composer, but he’s now in Virginia doing his thing and it was like I needed to step up and take that role to make sure this music had that support. I grew up in a recording studio and have Pro Tools experience, but it was always really for myself. And now I’m in this state-of-the-art recording studio with this console and all of the things, red curtains included. It was the studio where I first met David, many, many years ago, so there was this infusion of all our previous creative collaborations. 

But it was a real-life moment because I was like, “Okay, I just have to do this.” And I watched a lot of YouTube videos and I managed to figure it out. 

What’s a typical day in that studio like? Are there lots of people milling around?

There’s no one there. When David is in the midst of big projects, his compound is bustling, but that’s not what’s happening right now.

David and I made the record at a workstation, and really all I was in charge of doing was making sure that what we created was in a proper software that I could then export and be able to get things mastered and just organise. The music was made, and my part was just some technical things on the other side of the equation that had to be in place so that it could be sent off for mastering. So [at that point] I was really in the studio by myself, and sometimes I would call in reinforcements when I needed them. But David and I were with one another for the entire creation of the record.

What’s it like hanging out with Lynch at his studio?

We share meals and conversation. You don’t have many people in your life that you’ve known for so long and have a rich history. So yeah: hanging out, meditating, picking meals and having talks, and then also making music. We love big conversations, questions that have no answers, exploring esoteric topics. He does a lot of sharing about his passion for consciousness, and his exploration into the world of the Vedas and the knowledge that comes from this ancient source.

Tammy’s relationship with Gordon [Lynch’s character in Twin Peaks: The Return] is very similar to my relationship with David. He’s a fount of knowledge and information, and also a really great listener. He wants to know what you think about things and to encourage your perspective, but he’s going to tell you if he doesn’t agree, and he’s going to try to set you straight if he feels like you’re headed down the wrong path.

David and I are both workers, so it’s a really great thing when we get to work together and then also be pals in the process because it’s the greatest to feel like you get to hang out with your pal and then make art. It’s the best. I think that that’s why David often works with the same people again and again because he really loves them as people, and he gets to hang out with them when they do projects together, and that’s the ideal situation.

About Tammy: I read that the mixed fan response to the character sent you down some emotional rabbit holes. How do you feel about the series now we’re seven years on?

Yeah, emotional rabbit holes, that’s what Reddit is also called. When I imagined what my life would be like after Twin Peaks, it was definitely a very romantic vision. I thought it would yield all these things in my career, but what it did was so much more. You get to understand that both adoration and vitriol, it’s all part of it, and you really can’t lean into one or the other. For Twin Peaks, I was so out of my comfort zone and I was ready and willing to do something that completely terrified me, and I got so much from that.

Is there a particular moment from the shoot that sticks in your mind now that a few years have gone by?

Part of it was getting to work with Miguel Ferrer [who plays FBI agent Albert Rosenfield; Ferrer died in 2017 before the series aired] and getting to become friends with him. I was such a novice, I was so inexperienced on set, and there was a time when we’d finished a scene and everyone left and I was just standing there, and Miguel so graciously walked up and he was like, “You can go to your trailer now. We’re done here. When they’re ready for the next scene, they’ll come and get you.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” 

His compassion in the moment for my utter lack of experience was deeply appreciated. I was really out of my league, but I was also given all of these lovely lifelines by people who were compassionate about the situation.

Are there other projects you and David are working on together?

So David and I… you never know because all the elements have to be spinning a certain way to catch the light a certain way, to then begin to think about the next project. It’s a very mysterious process, but we’re starting to whisper about the next musical endeavour. We’ve got some ideas taking shape, but whether that will happen… because if the wind changes, you know? But there are whispers.

Cellophane Memories is out now on Sacred Bones Records.

David Lynch is interviewed in the September 2024 issue of Sight and Sound magazine.