R.I.P. Glenn Branca. Branca passed away from throat cancer on May 13 this year. He was 69 years old. 

When I was in high school I first heard about Glenn Branca. He was one of those figures that I knew about, but didn’t hear for several years later. Maybe I first read about him in a Hide fanzine interview. I’m not sure. I know the Garys brought him town and I kept missing him, but everything I read suggested he was going to be a key figure in my musical imagination. 

I really don’t know what made me eventually buy this particular record, the first Branca recording I bought, but it was everything I needed and wanted at that moment, some time in the late 1980s (1988 when it came out perhaps?) I think. I was sort of into hardcore at the time, but kept wanting it to be more adventurous musically, which is counterintuitive I guess, but someone had to be curious about what happens when you, a self-taught composer like Branca, take a typical rock band bass/drums/combo, and then add a choir of ten electric guitars. In Branca’s case, the guitars were used to produce notes that were outside of the typical Western system of tuning. We would call the effect a drone today. Back then it just cleared the slate for me: it gave me great hope for the possibility of artists producing new things, new sounds, new ideas.

Discovering Branca was like discovering Michael Snow, Peter Greenaway, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Jackson Pollock, Kathy Acker, Patti Smith, Meredith Monk. I'm grateful that I somehow ended up becoming a fan. 

It’s difficult to find the piece on YouTube or Vimeo, but here’s a link to it on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/09ipfPocCDSAhmLp5pBV7K?si=FHF9uvyKS4GSf1daL8ZzOA). I suspect you can find it on Apple Music as well.