[douglasdickel]

Glenn Branca
Lesson No. 1
[Acute]

What is it: Glenn Branca's first solo release after leaving punk/no-wave outfit Theoretical Girls, plus a piece written for Twyla Tharp's dance company in 1982 and played by an ensemble including Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo.

What we said: "The liner notes quote Branca as regarding 'Lesson No. 1' as a simple experiment in minimalism. Simple or not, it is most certainly huge. It begins with two guitars picking out pulsating Reichian riffs before introducing a triumphant one-note wall of sound with organ and bass shifting underneath to give a sense of harmonic movement. It contains the seeds of Branca's future work with cells of tonal noise, and today can't help but bring to mind everything from the seared distorted walls of My Bloody Valentine to the triumphant crescendos of Godspeed You Black Emperor! to Oneida's ultra-repetitive jams...'Dissonance' replicates the pounding honking perpetual motion of city life, shifting in and out of polyrhythmic experimentation and more chugging guitar work. It dispels any notion that Branca's complexity might only be rhetorical. Whether you want to call it punk-fueled anti-prog or recontextualized art music, it is complicated stuff." [full review]