Glenn Branca
The Ascension

"What is this record? What is it?"

"Don't you know it?"

"Never heard of it..."

"Well, it's hard to explain, you should listen to it...."

"Please, try!"

"Mmm, I'd say I can describe it as a vomiting of hypnotic guitars filtered through a lens about to faint..."

"Oh! Sounds amazing... But is it a big mess of noise, then?"

"No, it's mathematically regular, like an ancient symphony..."

Paraphrasing Charles Bukowski, trying to talk about avant-garde is like trying to screw a cat. I say this because "avant-garde" is a term I've never particularly appreciated or truly understood. In the case of music, I believe a record can appear either beautiful or ugly, there's no middle ground. Personally, I like well-made music, I don't care at all about the genre. And if I hear some unexpected spark in it that surprises me, even better. Because I believe that art, more generally, through all its forms, should be easily understandable and at the same time should unsettle. And only in this sense can I try to define what avant-garde is: it's a way to call the most extreme and swift spark of artistic creativity, it's the tip of the dagger that comes at you suddenly, it's the knuckles of the punch unleashed on your face, it's the cold scream that can abruptly wake you in the early morning. Within the avant-garde, music rules supreme. Because after all, it remains the most direct form of creativity, involving ears, brain, muscles, tongue, and fingers. And the lower part of the body for those who like to feel it in the bathroom.

And I don't think there are many records, speaking of the last fifty years, that have reached this elusive spark.

Some musical groups have done it by mixing old with the unthinkable (Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno), others have reached it by venturing into music completely out of time (Faust, Residents, Popol Vuh). In one way or another, all these artists have laid the foundations for musical movements of subsequent years, yet being the only ones to truly be part of them. I believe this is what it means to be "avant-garde": not pure mental masturbation, even if innovative, but rather soul and brain (damaged). Study but also Instinct. Light and shadow. Rational and irrational.

And surely "The Ascension" by Glenn Branca must be mentioned, perhaps one of the last testimonies of musical artistic spark in many years.

FEET ON THE GROUND

"The Ascension" arrives relatively late compared to the seventies and all the masterpieces previously mentioned. It was released in 1981 and falls within the second wave of musical gems, those of the eighties with Foetus and Tuxedomoon, yet stands apart because its nature is even more underground, and strongly cultured. It certainly has something in common with the no-wave and the noisy cacophony of Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Mars, DNA, and Contortions, captured live in "No New York", but this applies more to Branca's earlier works. Here the approach, besides being punk, is genuinely intellectual. And with a flick, good old Glenn kick-starts true noise-rock, remaining forever a gold medalist in the genre. The "noise" of the record is achieved with unconventionally tuned electric guitars, accompanied by percussion, and the volume of the sounds is particularly loud. But, strangely, this electric chaos is completely controlled, and does not excessively disturb the ear. This is because we're faced with a bounded noise, following precise musical equations. It is precisely the rhythm that plays the main role, curbing excessively acid rides: in short, there are no traces of noise clouds like Arto Lindsay or Royal Trux, even if the power of Sister Ray by Velvet Underground is not forgotten. Aside from the drums, it's the blends of guitars that serve as the rhythmic base, often even more than the actual percussion. The noise is not unpleasant, rather, it gradually transforms into a symphony, mathematically crystalline. The overall harmony is probably due to the strange but effective mix of noise-rock, East Coast pop, and avant-garde minimalism of Terry Riley and LaMonte Young. Just like in drone music, there's always a note or a chord that starts the track, and this is continuously played also for the entire duration of the piece, often determining the tonality of the composition itself. And it's incredible how creative each single track is, each a subtle and devastating noisy piece in its own way, always connected to what could be called "the little army of guitars" of Glenn Branca.

Growing up immersed in punk, Glenn Branca here becomes chief doctor and directs, also playing guitar, a quintet of musicians, including the future Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo (who will learn very well the master's lesson), Ned Sublette and David Rosenbloom on the other guitars, Stephan Wischert on drums, Jeffrey Glenn on bass.

The result is chamber music for rock instruments, and the precision of the musical intertwining is as magical as it is radioactive. "The Ascension" perhaps reached the highest peak of modern noise-making, which is neither self-serving nor made of simple improvised reverberations: here noise is truly valued, it has its own soul and finally its own logic. Branca is a mad orchestra conductor, who instead of a baton has a hammer. The music evolves and breathes, and the notes are powerful and human, extreme and draining. Cryptically tasty.

"Lesson No. 2" immediately opens the curtain intriguing the listener's ear, making them say: "Mmm, so there is still something I haven't heard that can amaze me!" In "The Spectacular Commodity", percussion and tempo changes dominate, while "Structure" is a short but intense little branchian gem, that finally begins to lift the feet off the ground; then the fourth and penultimate track, "Light Field (In Consonance)", presents in turn all the guitars, and one follows the other's voice, almost creating a whirl of echoes; now it’s all over, now we are ready for the final track, the title track. Now we are ready to ascend.

THE ASCENSION

One of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever listened to. We are lifted by mysterious textures of ancestral memories, and slowly ascend upward, amid polluted currents of notes. We are dazed. Our wings grow more and more, yet we do not know to what paradise we are heading. Everything floats and creaks, and around us clouds, sewers, grimaces, laughter, broken bones. I remember when I ascended for the first time, everything came by itself, and I merely watched in amazement. And after, slowly but with a gigantic bang, I descended back to earth. Burned and rejuvenated. I will never forget my first time. And if I had to visually express this record, I would immediately show its cover. Because it is one of the most beautiful I remember, reflecting both beauty and chaos. A sort of Michelangelo-esque Pietà transplanted into modern life, to reflect the epic and metropolitan nature of this ascension. Wide eighties-style jackets, thin ties, a light in the top right, and a great, great desire to move upward, while New York's skyscrapers are collapsing.

"The Ascension", or "of the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood".