Decibel New Music Ensemble hail Twin Peaks movie in Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts performance season

It was a dark and stormy night at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts on Thursday for Decibel New Music Ensemble’s take on the David Lynch Twin Peaks movie, Fire Walk With Me. Decibel’s work, Twin Peaks Was 30, pairs Angelo Badalamenti’s score, arranged by WA’s Candice Susnjar, with Australian companion pieces including world premieres from West Australians Rebecca Erin and Rachael Dease, and Tasmania’s Matt Warren. A masked guide rings a bell and Pied Piper-style leads the audience out past the carpark and through a back door to an inner space wrapped in red velvet drapes and suffused with cool jazz. Saxophone (Lindsay Vickery), then flute (director Cat Hope) over electronica (Stuart James) and brushed drums (Louise Devenish) haunt the air as Jenny Hector’s lighting scheme plunges the room into darkness. Curtains open on a shrouded scene; cymbals shimmer, a guitar tremoloes and a siren wails. Mysterious voices intone a script and a shot rings out during Badalamenti’s theme song. A wind machine rustles and an insistent note tolls out on viola (Aaron Dungey), while cello (Tristen Parr) stalks in the bass register. Viola opens out and a face peers through the shroud in reference to sinister deeds. Strings strike a dance measure for Warren’s The Tulpas Meet, throwing to cymbals then bass. Electronica fills out the palette, joined by voice and sax in a descending scale redolent with regret. Warmer chords break through over muffled drums and the shroud winds back to reveal Dease, gently intoning the Badalamenti-Lynch ballad Questions in a World of Blue; full of longing against a wintry backdrop. Cello and sax take up a mellow refrain before the wind resumes and we’re led away. Winding through the building as if in a fairground ghost house, we arrive at a gallery above the auditorium, watching the artists on black-and-white monitors. A bass drone cleaves the air. Dissociated notes in strings and sax deepen the mystery, darkened by bass flute and blending in a primordial soup for Victorian James Rushford’s Espalier. Breath effects stir the bleak ambience and listless glissandos summon despair over another low drone. On the move again, a plain, bright room opens up around a chequered performance space. A dense hanging artwork reflects the title of Erin’s Glacé Cocoon, interweaving two physical motifs of the drama. Febrile murmurings spill over from restless strings, tuned percussion and fluttering woodwind. Bell tones summon urgent energy and a bowed note rings out. Strings summon the spirit of the beehive and percussion echoes gamelan over scattered notes and another electronic drone. In keeping with the mystery, music hardly registers before morphing to another mode, leaving the listener ever off-guard. Insistent resonance demands attention but the pattern barely coalesces before covering its tracks in another cacophonous climax, racing towards a jump-cut cadence. Moving on again, Lynch’s The Pink Room presents a cantina-like jazz band, complete with guitar (Susnjar) and string bass (Phil Waldron). Drinks are served and we’re immersed in a surreal shebeen as Hope strides through the audience, challenging with presence and gesture. Walking bass then ambient cello and chimes broach a rueful lament in Dease’s Since I was 12. Reverb gradually rises to overpower the room then falls away to strident strings and woodwind with dissonance in bass. Dance returns with gentle voice over sparse chords, fading to … Falling and Laura’s Theme, from the original score. Echoes of the opening number in guitar then synth build with anthemic intensity as Dease beats time and clarinet floats over the top, joined by flute and viola in quasi-choral timbre. Successive waves of sound fill out the chorale in undulating, elegiac phrases and Dease adds her own poignant tones, binding the whole. As encore, a bleak, heartrending take by Dease on Badalamenti-Lynch’s The Sycamore Tree, echoed in sax over plangent cello and bass, holds all entranced to the last piano chord. Twin Peaks Was 30 continues on Friday and Saturday at PICA, presented with Tura. The PICA performance season continues with Strut Dance and Restore, May 29-June 1. pica.org.au.