Anthology Resource Vol. 1 △△

You don’t have to pay attention to Anthology Resource Vol. 1 △△. In fact, I’d go so far as to make that an order: Do not pay attention to Anthology Resource. This album of ambient music and soundscapes from the astonishing third season of “Twin Peaks,” by the show’s music and sound supervisor Dean Hurley, will frustrate focused attempts at listening. Passages feel overlong and repetitive, despite 11 of the collection’s 18 compositions clocking in at two minutes or less. Moments of beauty and terror burst out of the murk, only to dissipate with aggravating speed. Hurley’s airy electronic tones conjure up a sense of space so distinct you can practically see it, as titles like “Weighted Room / Choral Swarm,” “Tube Wind Dream,” “Interior Home by the Sea,” and “Forest / Interior” make clear. Yet the effect of sitting and listening intently to song after song is like looking through a window at these strange new worlds, only for someone to abruptly close the blinds on you over and over.

Here’s the thing, though: So what?

Of the various “Twin Peaks” soundtrack albums coming down the pike—the Angelo Badalamenti–based original score and a collection of the songs played by the show’s many musical guests at the Roadhouse are also on the way—Anthology Resource contains music that really isn’t meant to be noticed. These are the sounds that accompany overhead shots of the forest, or crackle and hum during visits to—or from—the otherworldly Black Lodge and the strange supernatural realm beyond it. They lurk in the background, helping co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost create a mood of mystery and menace, only occasionally leaping out to positions of prominence in the overall work. In that role, they’re ruthlessly effective.

As a longtime Lynch collaborator, Hurley is familiar enough with the filmmaker’s sonic palette to get playful with it. Several songs evoke Lynch’s musical muse, Badalamenti: “Slow One Chord Blues (Interior)” sounds like one of the composer’s red-light rock grooves, but being played by a band at a party down the block, its guitar and bass distorted by distance; “Tube Wind Dream” has the feel of one of the wistful musical paeans to the doomed Laura Palmer from Fire Walk With Me, while “Angel Choir Reveal” and “Seven Heaven” echo its redemptive finale; “Eastern European Symphonic Mood No. 1” is a pastiche of the drawn-out minor-key synth lines Badalamenti laid down for Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.

Elsewhere, “Electricity I” and “Electricity II” are true to their titles, sizzling their way into an industrial cacophony not unlike the abrasive screech that accompanies the staticky Lynch/Frost Productions title card at the end of each episode. Similarly, “Black Box” sounds like a failed attempt to receive a transmission from one of the show’s many bizarre communication devices (or, perhaps, a radio station). Even the album’s most song-like track, “Night Electricity Theme”—featuring an ominous but contemplative melody halfway between Abigail Mead’s score for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and the Haxan Cloak—has a title that telegraphs the director’s preoccupations.

Indeed, Lynch’s love of these jittery audio-visual sensations is well documented. “Sitting in front of a fire is mesmerizing,” he writes in his meditation treatise cum memoir Catching the Big Fish. “It’s magical. I feel the same way about electricity. And smoke. And flickering lights.” Add ���wind through the trees” and you’ve pretty much nailed every sound on this album. All of these phenomena are characterized by an unpredictable ebb-and-flow, sparkle-and-fade rhythm.

The same can be said of one of Lynch’s other great interests in life, the one he credits as the font of his creativity and success: transcendental meditation. Introduced to the pop-culture world when its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, taught it to the Beatles, and now practiced by figures from Lynch and Martin Scorsese to Katy Perry and Howard Stern, the technique is based on the mental repetition of a mantra as a means to reach a deep inner peace. The trick, however, is not to focus on that repetition: TM practitioners are taught to take the various thoughts and sensations that arise during meditation as they come, without making any concerted effort to clear the mind or bear down on any particular idea or goal.

In this light, Anthology Resource Vol. 1 △△ makes more sense, both as an accompaniment to “Twin Peaks” and as a standalone album. You’re not meant to make this music the centerpiece of your mental landscape, any more than you’re intended to ignore the on-screen imagery to listen to it during the show. Take it as it comes—noticing it when it becomes noticeable, enjoying it when it becomes enjoyable, and drifting away from it when it drifts away from you.