Theoretical Girls
Theoretical Record

If that frantic and grand orchestra that seemed to be the most oppositional and progressive New York at the dawn of the transition between the seventies and eighties had a conductor, it was undoubtedly Glenn Branca. The man, whose adverse charm stimulated the fantasies of the city's most important 'wannabes' and beyond, stood at the center of a loft movement distancing itself from the club dynamics that had prevailed until then. In that small circle, which mixed visual, musical, and theatrical arts in a single container, all the most deviant minds of the bunch converged, from Arto Lindsay to Lydia Lunch, passing through James Chance and Lucy Hamilton, Jeffrey Lohn and Wharton Tiers, and reaching Rhys Chatham.

In this fervent artistic context, Theoretical Girls took their first steps, whose core besides the already mentioned Glenn Branca, Jeffrey Lohn, and Wharton Tiers (all key figures of the No Wave and avant-garde scene, both present and future), also included the keyboardist Margaret DeWys.

"Theoretical Record" has the task of reminding us the genesis of multiple forms of expression that from then on would contemplate noise in the American underground. Strongly tied to the dynamics of Punk - the reverberation of what was done by Television and New York Dolls still sliced through the air - all that clamor had the taste of liberation, though still embryonic, from dynamics and attitudinal schemes prescribed by the label circuits. "Computer Dating" and "Nato" seem to want to explain that confusion is sex, while the spastic Industrial clangor of "Polytonal" manages to horrify and make you smile at the same time. The noisy New Wave of "Mom & Dad", disturbed by DeWys's excellent electronic counterpoints, does not go unnoticed, as well as the deviant approach of "Chicita Bonita" and "Parlez-Vou Francais". "Theoretical Girls", "Europe Man", and "No More Sex", on the other hand, contrast the 'arty' approach with their whimsical Punk Rock almost as if to remind us where all that noise comes from, geographically and musically.

What stands out above all are the unusually sharp guitars, unusually unbearable, unusually majestic, and unusually noisy of Glenn Branca and Jeffrey Lohn (also acting here as the sole songwriter), who play at revisiting the model of "Rock dialogue" between axes, generating debris.

John Cage wasn't wrong in associating years later Branca's noise violence - and relative demonstration of power - with fascism. And to think that three years were still missing from the ascension.