Glenn Branca
The Ascension

If the art of music composition possessed physical laws, this would be the work conceived to destroy and recreate them with sadistic delight. A minimal, muffled Penelope's Web, perpetually disturbed by self-oppressive breaks. A flower of prepackaged irrationality whose distribution was to be intended solely and exclusively for characters with difficult and (somewhat) "dubious" tastes. A world of noises expressed in the form of physical violence to instrumental limbs whose declining vitality can be mistakenly perceived until actual understanding: the Asceticism.

The introspective journey filled with radioactivity that Branca decides to undertake culminates in the demystification of metrics, proposed from the start with "Lesson N. 2," a piece born to unhinge from the beginning the thread that deformedly but marvelously disciplined links each non-symphony to the other. The emotional tension with which the clanging guitars take over thoughts proves to be, in my opinion, unrivaled as the factor, the soul, and the body of this masterpiece. A factor that allows for subjective interpretations that differ vastly from one another but strive to seek that sanctity that, though clouded, indirectly seeps through the wall of noise, as if trying to walk through a garden whose thorns obscure the end of it: a garden of lies prostituted in a term usually violated by the commonplace. Noise.
A sound Nazism that marches with impetuosity from "The Spectacular Commodity" to "Structure" at a pace of relentless firmness, capable of expressing all its verve in "Light Field (In Consonance)," a tribal, cold example of routine slaughtered by the aforementioned deviations. But time stands still. The heart, slowly, shivers and bows before "The Ascension," the pivot of the work. I swear in my life I have never heard anything more sensual, so spiritual and at the same time sacrilegious as this filter of lost love, whose effect extends for the most unusual fifteen minutes of Your life. Amid opposing currents and majestically silent winds that etch the face, the ascent is accomplished, though tainted by sporadic violations and interruptions that seem to want to return to the enforced discipline of the previous tracks.

A fruit of unique beauty in a world of clichés and television reruns. A standalone sky, perpetually variable, polluted and revered by the very deformities that constitute it. The fifth element. A Masterpiece.