Glenn Branca - The Ascension
#285
June 15 1981
Glenn Branca
The Ascension
Genre: Before there was a youth to be sonic there was Glenn Branca
5 out of 5
Highlights:
The Spectacular Commodity
Light Field (In Consonance)
I held on to this one.
See, when I was in college I was…shall we say…pretentious.
I talked my way in to NYU because I had enough cursory and conversational knowledge about Experimental Theater (The Wooster Group, The Performing Garage, Mabou Mines, etc) that, after my audition, which was pretty good, I learned a year later that I was “academically rejected” and that the auditors, who were students, had written, “We believe he has potential.”
I should never have been allowed to matriculate there. I was out of my depth.
The Experimental Theater department played havoc with my brain. I was always a method actor. I tried to embody the characters I played to the point where I got lost in them sometimes.
But, had I not been placed in ETW I would never have gotten in, based on the initial rejection.
I should have gone to Syracuse, where I was accepted.
But then my life would have been 100% different and I’m very sure that I would not have come to LA when I did, which was a seminal moment in the course of my life. I’d probably have stayed home for a bit to figure out what I wanted to do and then, when my father died in. 1990, I most like would have just stayed on the east coast.
Life is a journey of near misses, I think.
And it’s in NY that I fell in with a crowd of brilliant actors and filmmakers who were all the real deal, as opposed to me who was an imposter.
So, to keep up, I tried to read as much as I could about the form and the makers and that led me back to the likes of Laurie Anderson, who I always had been a fan of.
And in those readings I learned the name Glenn Branca. And his “Guitarestra”.
I had heard that it was brilliant and a work of genius but I never investigated it.
And then I started this project and 1981 brought me to The Ascension.
I expected an orchestra of guitars.
What I got was something completely unexpected.
“Branca wanted to explore the resonances generated when guitar strings tuned to the same note were played at high volumes. He assembled the Ascension Band with four electric guitarists, one bassist, and one drummer. The group included guitarist Lee Ranaldo, who later joined alternative rock band Sonic Youth.”
This is the sound of mayhem controlled, especially on the cinematic car crash of “The Spectacular Commodity”, which I have not heard since that first listen and is just as powerful as the first time I’ve heard it. It’s not for pleasant easy listening. It’s the sound of horror writ large as a musical manifesto. “Light Field (In Consonance)” is one of the most majestic and epic things I’ve ever heard and I think Koyaanisqatsi would have been even better had Branca scored it.
The Ascension defies a lot of my own mission statement here. Is it “rock” just because it utilizes Rock instruments? I say, yes. It’s also an instrumental and that would normally cast it into the bin but because of my own personal history I am allowing it. Also because it is, simply, one of the most remarkable and brilliant albums of the era and no one knows it.
They’ve never heard of it.
No one plays it.
It’s unspoken.
But, it’s genius.
And I’m not just saying that to get into a college.
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