NEW MUSIC REVIEW : David Lynch’s ‘Industrial Symphony’ Heavy on Spectacle

Singer Julee Cruise in a white prom dress floating down from the rafters like a Barbie doll playing Tinker Bell . . . a stage set including a grid of power lines above an oil derrick with a woman wearing only a black bikini bottom draped inside the framework . . . Three video monitors facing the audience projecting the image of Cruise singing on stage from the opened trunk of a classic late ‘40s coupe, flanked by two demurely dancing women in prom dresses and 10 others shimmying in Vegas show-girl costumes.

Does this add up to an Industrial Symphony?

It did to director David Lynch, whose “Industrial Symphony No. 1” received its world premiere Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during the 10th annual New Music America festival. Lynch’s collaboration with composer Angelo Badalamenti wasn’t a symphony in the classical, orchestral vein--more a striking industrial “visual” accompanied by a taped sound track that alternated between ominous washes of synthesized sound and pieces derived from ‘50s vocal group songs.

But the New Music America festival welcomes those unorthodox approaches. Its focus isn’t so much on presenting new artists or styles as giving leaders in alternative music styles--in jazz, electronic music, new classical or world music--over the last 20 years the opportunity to present fresh, often large-scale works.

The event, which runs through Saturday, revolves around performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But the festival’s scope was wide enough to include shows at Manhattan experimental art spaces like the Kitchen and Dance Theater Workshop as well as nightspots like S.O.B.’s (Sounds of Brazil), CBGB’s and the Knitting Factory, the small Soho club which has become a major center for new improvised music here.

Lynch’s work kicked off with a videotape from his latest film, “Wild At Heart,” depicting a phone call ending a relationship that elicited some chuckles with its archetypal tough guy and shattered girl dialogue before the curtain rose on a stunning tableaux. The industrial noir landscape, belching fire and smoke as that mysterious female character writhed in slow motion down the oil derrick before slithering face first into the back seat of the car, was a jaw dropper. The audience really got the feeling they had been transported into the murky realm of the subconscious.

But that visual spectacle remained the core of the piece--the music never gained enough dimension to supplant it as the center of attention. It was entertaining as spectacle, certainly, but nothing to get emotionally involved with and it ultimately suffered when the novelty wore off. Cruise’s entrance from the rafters was pretty breath-taking the first time around but, by the fourth, it was old hat.

“Industrial Symphony No. 1” was recognizably David Lynch in the way it contrasted the innocence of ‘50s rock songs with his forbidding view on real-life emotional perils. (And there was a typical blind spot--since this was the dream/nightmare subconscious of a jilted young woman, why was the mysterious female character half-naked and all the male characters fully clothed?) But it was a triumph of atmosphere at the expense of story, message or an emotional pay-off.