Mister Trend's Random 10

Glenn Branca is one of those happy accidents of my Sonic Youth obsession in my teenage years. At that time, I would check out anything that was mentioned in the same breath as Sonic Youth – anybody who opened for Sonic Youth, anybody who Sonic Youth name-checked, whatever, all in true teenager fashion. This wasn’t always a bad thing as I found music that was really great and different that way (that’s how I got into Sleater-Kinney and Shonen Knife and first heard John Coltrane, among others) and could skip what I didn’t like from them (Free Kitten). Glenn Branca was one of those artists I found out about this way, as I had learned that Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore first met when they were participating in a Branca composition. When I heard my first Branca album (his Symphony #5, which was then available through the wonderful Atavistic label), I was fairly sure I was listening to a recording from hell. Not in the sense that it sucked. Rather, it was simply the most terrifying thing I’d heard in my life (at least at that age), with its roaring, screaming, droning guitars (all 17 of them), chaotic drumming, and just sounds I’d never heard before, simultaneously cacophanous and chaotic yet hypnotic and orderly. I didn’t listen to him as much when I was in undergrad, but in the last 4 years or so, I’ve come to really appreciate him much more, and definitely think he deserves more credit as a 20th-century Avant-Garde composer (another problem with canonization – anything with guitars doesn’t count).

This week’s seventh song is not from one of Branca’s symphonies, but his album The Ascenscion. It is one of the more uplifting and beautiful works of Branca’s catalogue. Some of it is still absolutely terrifying (which has a beauty in and of itself), but it is probably among one of my top three favorite Branca compositions.

1. “Leah” – Bruce Springsteen
2. “Pay No Mind (Snoozer)” – Beck
3. “Good Day Sunshine” – The Beatles
4. “Dirtywhirl” – TV On the Radio
5. Egmont Overture – Ludwig Van Beethoven
6. Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World” – 2. Largo – Anton Dvořák
7. “Light Field (In Consonance)” – Glenn Branca
8. “Missing Link” – The Hives
9. “Free Radicals” – The Flaming Lips
10. “Alvin Row” – Animal Collective