“Okay, Bob (Echo)” is the first entry in the “Unvoiced” project, an ongoing series that invites artists to reimagine the non-verbal sounds of gothic and horror film and television, whether by remixing public domain materials or by using foley art and other techniques to think through, recreate, or reimagine the nonverbal sound track.
This first entry in the series was released on the occasion of the academic conference “Beyond Life and Death: Twin Peaks at Thirty.” The first portion recreates the nonverbal and ambient sounds from a scene in the Twin Peaks pilot episode (aired April 8, 1990), from timestamp 52:42-53:42. The second part samples that recreation and remixes it into a drone track.
In this scene Audrey sits on a desk, twisting a pencil into a styrofoam coffee cup; pulls it out to let the coffee spill over the paperwork on the desk, and then walks off loudly toward the conference room to cause similarly impish disruption with the Norwegian investors assembled there.
At that point, this track transitions into a drone built from samples of that recreated and “unvoiced” scene, processed using techniques that feature prominently in the sonic world of Twin Peaks itself–namely time-stretching and reverse processing.
The scene itself was chosen for its foregrounding of the obtrusive sound of the pencil twisting into styrofoam, but the process also led to an unexpected discovery. Audrey’s remark to the hotel employee – “Okay Bob – Okay Bob – Okay” – is palindromic, and seems meant as an eerie foreshadowing of revelations that will come about regarding the more sinister entity of that name, and of his affiliations with the preternatural world of the Black Lodge and its reverse-processed speech. However, playing this phrase backwards revealed an extra layer as “Okay Bob – okay Bob – Okay” became “Echo – Bob Echo – Bob Echo.”
Materials: styrofoam, water, paper, shoes, chair, bird, electric piano.
Recommended reading:
Pieter Dom, “To Score The Haunting Woodsmen Scene, David Lynch Severely Slowed Down Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ And Mixed It With Monkey Screeches,” welcometotwinpeaks.com/music/woodsmen-beethoven-moonlight-sonata/
Michael Goddard, “Telephones, Voice Recorders, Microphones, Phonographs: A Media Archaeology of Sonic Technologies in Twin Peaks,” www.sensesofcinema.com/2016/twin-peaks/sonic-technologies-in-twin-peaks/
Greg Hainge, “When Is a Door Not a Door? Transmedia to the Nth Degree in David Lynch’s Multiverse.” In Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics, edited by Carol Vernallis, Holly Rogers, and Lisa Perrott, 271–84. Bloomsbury, 2020.
Alice Kuzniar, “Double Talk in Twin Peaks.” In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, edited by David Lavery, 120–29. Wayne State University Press, 1995.
John McGrath, “On (Vari-)Speed across David Lynch’s Work.” In Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics, edited by Carol Vernallis, Holly Rogers, and Lisa Perrott, 285–90. Bloomsbury, 2020.
Holly Rogers, “The Audiovisual Eerie: Transmediating Thresholds in the Work of David Lynch.” In Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics, edited by Carol Vernallis, Holly Rogers, and Lisa Perrott, 241–70. Bloomsbury, 2020.
The Gothic Listening Project 