Glenn Branca

One of the boldest and most revolutionary students to emerge from the American minimalist school of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich is certainly Glenn Branca; his positioning halfway between the role of avant-garde composer and that of rock musician has always forced him to fight against prejudice and fierce criticism. His position is certainly an uncomfortable one: too academic for rock fans, too "politically incorrect" for academics. Indeed, Branca always tried to tear down every limit imposed by the rigid schemas of the avant-garde, aware that anyone who wants to make true avant-garde music should have no limits at all. Many criticized him; John Cage - after attending a performance of "Indeterminate Activity Of Resultant Masses" at the New Music America Festival in Chicago in 1982 - even called him a fascist (Luciano Berio did the same, aiming the insult at all minimalists).

But regardless of the criticism, Branca's merits - found not only in "The Ascension" but across his entire discography - are numerous. Branca revolutionizes the very idea of the electric guitar, which in the collective imagination has always been the symbol of "young" rock, turning it into a true instrument suited to the most subversive experimental music; he merges his passions - minimalism and rock music (punk and no wave in particular) - managing to play avant-garde music with electric guitars, bass, drums and nothing else. Even aesthetically, Branca's ensemble doesn't differ at all from a plain rock band. Branca moves beyond the minimalist movement - while still respecting its basic tenets (Young's endless sustained notes, or Riley's and Reich's repetitions and overlapping layers) - creating works of a power and energy that go far beyond classic minimalist pieces. In doing so, he turns minimalism into maximalism ("totalism" in English) and creates an avant-garde movement of enormous influence (Sonic Youth and all of noise-rock, Swans, Godspeed You! Black Emperor). Lastly, Branca is one of the foremost guitarists specializing in alternate tunings, studied and tested obsessively over the years, which allow him to create utterly unusual and original sounds.

Here is how American composer John Adams described the young Branca's ensemble during one of the earliest live performances of the First Symphony: "The event I heard at the Japan Center Theatre in San Francisco in 1981 was one of his symphonies for guitar. The band didn't look much different from thousands of other independent or alternative rock bands of the time: kids in jeans and worn-out t-shirts fussing with cables, wearing that typical distracted expression of rock musicians. Branca, thin and lanky, dressed in secondhand-store clothes with a James Dean-style pompadour, conducted with his guitar. The tunings wrenched the listener out of their comfortable, familiar world; the metal guitar strings gleamed and quivered with an entirely new resonance, something both alien and, at least for me, intensely thrilling. When the drums kicked in, the theater pulsed with hammering energy, but unlike a typical overamplified rock concert, this was full of unexpected and surprising acoustic events. Earplugs weren't merely recommended, they were essential. The walls of sound, created by clusters of electric guitars tuned in unusual ways, were amplified to volumes loud enough to drive you mad. Branca had ventured into the world of alternate tuning, using Pythagorean ratios that, once amplified to high levels, produced acoustic spectra, sonic artifacts impossible to achieve under normal performance conditions."

After his early experiences in the second half of the '70s with the no wave band Theoretical Girls, Branca met Lee Ranaldo - the future Sonic Youth guitarist - who became an essential member of his ensemble. After a first EP - "Lesson No.1" (1980) - Branca formed a sextet made up of four guitarists (Ned Sublette, David Rosenbloom, Lee Ranaldo and Branca himself), a bassist (Jeffrey Glenn) and a drummer (Stephan Wischerth). 1981 saw the release of his first LP, the monumental "The Ascension". The album is defined by its towering title track (thirteen minutes), which amounts, in every sense, to the founding manifesto of Branca's ideas; starting from faint guitar murmurs, it gradually builds into a terrifying wall of sound that sounds halfway between apocalyptic and mystical, between a kind of cosmic minimalism and an abyssal vortex of Lovecraftian terror, propelled by a drumbeat charged with primordial violence. There's no comfort to be found in the walls of sound of "The Ascension", only ecstasy and disorientation, hypnosis and boundless power. Branca saturates La Monte Young's "eternal" notes with energy, fills their empty spaces and creates a new avant-garde form.

"The Spectacular Commodity" (twelve minutes) is the most classic example of Branca's experiments with alternate tunings; the four guitars - each tuned differently - continuously overlap, building toward a remarkable new wave fugue that makes this track a true gem of 80s experimental rock. The very brief "Structure" is the most rigidly minimalist moment; just a few guitar notes repeated and layered, with only the tempo shifting, dictated by the drums' fury; within it we find all of the author's ideas distilled down, repetition and extreme power.

The eight minutes of "Light Field (In Consonance)" come across as more playful, yet still rigidly repetitive, while "Lesson No. 2" is initially tied to no wave and to the Theoretical Girls beginnings, before being torn apart by deafening noise passages that foreshadow much of what Sonic Youth would later do.

"The Ascension" is one of the albums that usher in the 1980s, marking an entirely new way of understanding music, whether popular or classical. After this extraordinary debut, Branca devoted himself to exploring and unpacking his inspirations across numerous symphonies (at least sixteen to date), each of which delves into different aspects of a musician overflowing with ideas.

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28/08/2016