Glenn Branca

Biography

1948, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. This avant garde composer and musician emerged from New York’s no-wave movement of the 70s, where he had been a member of the influential Theoretical Girls and the Static. Although several contemporaries experimented with punk and deconstructed jazz, this artist advanced symphonies for guitar, wherein specially developed instruments (‘mallet guitars’) employed a radical tuning system to accentuate the intervals between ‘true’ notes on a scale. 1980’s Lesson No.1 EP, issued on the pivotal 99 Records label, featured repetitive motifs, redolent of Philip Glass, but played with both dissonance and volume. The following year’s The Ascension followed an equally challenging perspective, but furious bass and drum patterns tightened its rhythms. A collaborative album with poet John Giorno, Who You Staring At?, ensued, on which Branca’s contribution, ‘Bad Smells’, featured music for a...

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