Glenn Branca (October 6, 1948 - May 13, 2018) is arguably the most influential Avant-Garde guitarist out there, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he first picked up a guitar at the age of 15. Around this time, he also created several tape experiments and sound collages for his own amusement. In 1966, he started the short-lived cover band The Crystal Ship. After studying theater at Emerson College, he formed the experimental theater group Bastard Theater in 1975. They performed two heavily unconventional and confrontational productions, which received interested reviews from a few news publications.
In 1976, he moved to New York City to continue experimental theater, where he met the N. Dodo Band, and watched them rehearse in hopes of using their rehearsal space as a stage for his productions. He soon became friends with their member Jeffrey Lohn, who introduced him to bands such as Suicide. The two formed a collaboration that was initially another theater group, before Branca decided he wanted to form a band instead. This band was initially called The Static, before changing their name to Theoretical Girls. Theoretical Girls were one of the first bands to play a specific brand of Punk Rock and Post-Punk called No Wave, which was intended to go against the poppy and accessible sound of New Wave by making something decidedly inaccessible and avant-garde. While they only played 20 shows, their sole single "You Got Me" wound up being heavily influential to bands such as Swans and Shellac. The rest of their studio recordings got compiled on the album Theoretical Record. Around this time, he recorded Y Pants' debut record and played on Rhys Chatham's album Guitar Trio, the latter of which influenced the sound he would take on later.
In 1980, he released his debut solo record Lesson No. 1, which wound up becoming a seminal work in No Wave despite poor sales. It also marked the start of his Serial Escalation in terms of how many guitars he could fit into one record (4 on this one, not counting the extra 2 that perform on the bonus track "Bad Smells"). It combines the repetition of minimal music with the aesthetics of Punk Rock, and influenced the likes of Sonic Youth and other experimental rock bands.
He followed this up with 1981's Even Better Sequel, The Ascension. While the no wave influence is still very much there, it adds in elements of Classical Music and Totalism, creating a more symphonic experience than most other noise rock albums. God knows what bands like Swans would be without tracks such as "Lesson No. 2", "The Spectacular Commodity", and the title track. It's around here he started to explore the harmonic series.
In 1982 he opened up Neutral Records, which is responsible for the release of much of his later material as well as early albums by Sonic Youth and Swans. He composed his last individual song, "Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses", in the same year, though it wouldn't be released until 2008.
Afterwards he more or less abandoned the album format in favor of becoming a fully-fledged classical composer and composing several symphonies (though the instruments used in them aren't typical of many orchestras, featuring bass guitar, a series of instruments made by Branca himself, and an increasingly large amount of guitars, including 100 on his thirteenth and sixteenth symphonies). These symphonies also included an amazing collection of performers, including Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Phil Kline of The Del-Byzanteens, and several members of Swans including Michael Gira, Dan Braun, and Algis Kizys. With Symphony No. 7, he began composing for more traditional orchestras, though he never abandoned the electric guitar.
He returned to the album format with 2010's The Ascension: The Sequel, which also got a follow-up in the posthumous release Ascension Three. In 2015, he completed his 16th and final symphony, Orgasm. His final composition was The Light (for David) for four guitars, bass, and drums, premiering in October 2016.
On May 14, 2018, Reg Bloor revealed on Facebook that Branca had died of throat cancer the night before. He was 69.
Discography:
With Theoretical Girls:
- Theoretical Record (2002, Recorded 1977-1979)
Solo Discography:
- Lesson No. 1 (1980)
- The Ascension (1981)
- Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses (Recorded 1982, Released 2007)
- Chicago '82 - A Dip in the Lake (1983)
- Symphony No. 3 (Gloria) (1983)
- Symphony No. 1 (Tonal Plexus) (1983)
- The Belly of an Architect (1987)
- Symphony No. 6 (Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven) (1989)
- Symphony No. 2 (The Peak of the Sacred) (1992)
- The World Upside Down (1992)
- The Mysteries (Symphonies Nos. 8 & 10) (1994)
- Symphony No. 9 (l'eve future) (1995)
- Songs '77-'79 (1996)
- Symphony No. 5 (Describing Planes of an Expanding Hypersphere) (1999)
- Empty Blue (2000)
- The Ascension: The Sequel (2010)
- Symphony No. 7 (Graz) (2011)
- Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) For 100 guitars (2015)
- The Third Acension (2019)
Tropes:
- Epic Rocking: For an artist known mainly for making a form of Punk Rock, he did this a lot. Not counting his symphonies,examples include all of Lesson No. 1, with the shortest track being 8 minutes and the longest being either 11 or 16, depending on the version, "The Spectacular Commodity" (12:41), "Light Field (In Consonance)" (8:17), "The Ascension" (13:10), "Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses" (31:11, probably his longest composition not counting the symphonies), "Quadratonic" (7:20), "Lesson No. 3 (Tribute to Steve Reich)" (12:00), "The Blood" (19:11), and all of The Third Ascension (The shortest being "Velvets and Pearls" at 6:06 and the longest being "Cold Thing (La Belle Dame sans Merci) at 16:29).
- Noise Rock: Probably the only genre most of his music would all fall under (Yes, even the symphonies).
- Sensory Abuse: Several of his compositions, but especially the Title Track of The Ascension, which eschews any sense of melody the previous compositions had in favor of chaotic walls of guitar noise over seemingly improvised drumming (though, believe it or not, the whole thing is entirely a composed piece).
