When Glenn Branca's "Symphony No. 8" was performed in Denmark at an arts festival attended by the queen and several dignitaries, the press described the effect of his music as "sound terror." For Branca, there is no such thing as "too loud": His most recent composition is an ensemble for 100 electric guitars. But Branca's album releases are far less grandiose than his live performances. While works such as "Symphony No. 1" for sixteen performers have overwhelmed audiences with their disorientingly high volumes, oil-drum percussion and Branca's spastic conducting style, the live sound is too large to be even approximated through two speakers, leaving a listener to wonder what the big deal was about. In contrast, last year's reissue of The Ascension and this year's Lesson No. 1 contain earlier works for small ensembles. They may not have shattered as many eardrums, but on CD the sound remains close enough to grab hold of you and lift you into Branca's intense world.
The first two pieces on this album, "Lesson No. 1" and "Dissonant"-- originally released in 1980-- comprise Branca's first solo release after leaving punk/no-wave outfit Theoretical Girls. The liner notes quote him as regarding "Lesson No. 1" as a simple experiment in minimalism. Simple or not, it is most certainly huge. It begins with two guitars picking out pulsating Reichian riffs, before introducing a triumphant one-note wall of sound with organ and bass shifting underneath to give a sense of harmonic movement. It contains the seeds of Branca's future work with cells of tonal noise, and today can't help but bring to mind everything from the seared distorted walls of My Bloody Valentine to the triumphant crescendos of Godspeed You Black Emperor! to Oneida's ultra-repetitive jams. The guitars increasingly bend in pitch as the piece continues, exploring a microtonal world of detuned strings. Like minimalist composer Rhys Chatham-- with whom he briefly played before they became rivals-- Branca was interested in highlighting the harmonics extant in battling waveforms and the sounds that naturally emerge from repetition.
As "Lesson No. 1" encapsulates the ecstatic drama of future instrumental post-rock, "Dissonance" foretells the broken industrial sound of many composers to come, especially that of the Bang on a Can collective with whom Branca has associated himself in recent years. Scored for guitar, keyboards, bass, drums and sledgehammer, "Dissonance" replicates the pounding honking perpetual motion of city life, shifting in and out of polyrhythmic experimentation and more chugging guitar work. "Dissonance" dispels any notion that Branca's complexity might only be rhetorical. Whether you want to call it punk-fueled anti-prog or recontextualized art music, it is complicated stuff, requiring great practice from the instrumentalists and mental engagement on the listener's part.
Some classicists proclaim rock incapable of the emotional subtlety and variation of orchestral music. The extra inclusion of "Bad Smells"-- a piece written for Twyla Tharp's dance company in 1982 and played by an ensemble including Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo-- spends 16 minutes dispelling that notion. Though still a relatively early composition for Branca, it contains an overwhelming variety of moods and textures-- reverie, humor, triumph, anger, struggle-- and makes this CD worth considering even if you own the previous reissue of Lesson No. 1. This release also includes a video showing Branca conduct a part of his "Symphony No. 5", and it is a powerful thing to watch as this composer frantically embodies the electric energy of his own music-- or maybe it's the other way around.
