Glenn Branca - The Ascension - 180g White Vinyl featuring Lee Ranaldo

donfortissimo · 03.30.2010, 04:53 PM

Glenn Branca - The Ascension 180g white vinyl, ltd to 1000. Order now at www.fortissimorecords.co.uk

http://www.facebook.com/#%21/photo.php?pid=5516210&op=1&o=global&view=global&su bj=583152166&id=505060820

Press for the CD reissue on Acute Records:

David bowie picks his favorite 25 records
Bought in Zurich, Switzerland. This was an impulse buy. The cover got me. Robert Longo produced what is essentially the best cover art of the 80s (and beyond, some would say). Mysterious in the religious sense, Renaissance angst dressed in Mugler. And on the inside…Well, what at first sounds like dissonance is soon assimilated as a play on the possibilities of overtones from massed guitars. Not minimalism, exactly – unlike LaMonte Young and his work within the harmonic system, Branca uses the overtones produced by the vibration of a guitar string. Amplified and reproduced by many guitars simultaneously, you have an effect akin to the drone of Tibetan Buddhist monks but much, much, much louder. Two key players in Branca’s band were future composer David Rosenbloom (the terrific Souls of Chaos, 1984) and Lee Ranaldo, founding figure with Thurston Moore of the great Sonic Youth. Over the years, Branca got even louder and more complex than this, but here on the title track his manifesto is already complete.
Careless Talk Saves Lives July 2003
Jon Dale
Finally, Glenn Branca’s classic “The Ascension” has just been reissued by Acute, and, as you would expect, it’s magnificent, huge and dense and threshing and full of miraculous clouds of overtone hover and viciously breathed guitar heaviness. It’s a classic piece of NYC loft process-rock brutalism that no home should live without. And if that’s not enough, the sheer sonic violence of the two-minute solo performance, captured on film and appended to the disc, is one of the most exhilirating things I’ve heard since Keiji Haino first blatted my head’s way. And, really, can you ask for more than that?

Kerrang, June 21 2003
Ben Myers
Guitar-mangling pioneer on an undiscovered alt-rock classic. The missing link between Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca played a pivotal role in the evolution of guitar music. Deconstructing the electric guitar and rebuilding it as howling, clunking, feedback-drenched symphonies that utilized multiple players, his work owes just as much to the experimental sounds of Philip Glass as The Stooges. Cutting his teeth alongside the NY punks of the late ’70s, Branca’s “The Ascension” (released in 1981) features future Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and is one of the great undiscovered gems of no wave/alternative rock. Nihilism, discordance, chaos and tightly-wound musicianship are the order of the day here, ‘pieces’ such as “The Ascension” and the 12-minute “The Spectacular Commodity” the 1980’s underground’s versions of the ‘1812 Overture’. In a word: visionary.

NME, June 14th 2003
Louis Pattison
New York visionary’s symphonic guitar piece While most of his downtown contemporaries seemed set on dragging punk rock into the gutter, Glenn Branca had a higher purpose. On 1981’s “The Ascension”, four guitars are gathered into a shrieking symphony, multiple strings tuned to the same note to ratchet up the sheer aural overload. It’s by turns gratingly shrill and starkly beautiful – like the ghost of Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’ channeled into a towering Marshall stack. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo plays here, and Thurston Moore would later join Branca’s ranks. But while the Youth derived much from this monolithic maelstrom, they would never better it.
9

The Telegraph, June 14th 2003
Lynsey Hanley
In recent years, Glenn Branca has come to be associated more with the classical end of avant-garde music, alongside Philip Glass and Steve Reich, creating mesmerizing, repetitive tone cycles as part of his eponymous Ensemble. But he started out making experimental rock music with the likes of Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, who went on to infiltrate the mainstream as members of Sonic Youth. Recorded in 1981, this album, released for the first time on CD, features Ranaldo as one of four guitarists that Branca put together in an attempt to trample over the limitations of the more conventional new wave sounds of the time. Like Patti Smith and Television, his musicians came out of the exhilaratingly pretentious scene that centred around downtown New York in the late 1970s. On each of the five compositions they wield their guitars like harmonious power tools, frightening and often ear-splitting in their strength. Not the easiest of records to listen to, but still sounding thrillingly new 22 years after its first release.

Uncut, June 2003
Jim Allen
Overdue reissue of No Wave classic — five stars The guitar wizard at the forefront of NYC late-70s/early-’80s “No Wave”, Glenn Branca mated contemporary classical structure with ear-splitting noise-rock in a manner that served both camps equally well, influencing avant noiseniks from Sonic Youth on. Branca’s second release for NY underground label 99 (home to ESG, Liquid Liquid, etc) is reissued here in all its multi-timbral glory, as sheets of cascading guitars carefully negotiate the balance between chaos and control. Extras like a live video clip and notes from Branca’s sideman/future Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo sweeten the pot.

The Wire, June 2003
David Keenan
Originally released in 1981 on 99 records, Glenn Branca’s The Ascension provides a fantastic snapshot of a transitional moment in the history of New York’s downtown music. It represents the first attempt to rebuild on ground previously leveled by No Wave groups Mars, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Red Transistor and Branca’s own The Static and Theoretical Girls. No Wave was primarily fuelled by profound acts of reversal and subtraction, where any overt notions of melody, form and musicianship were stripped out in favour of a more elemental and emotionally direct attack. All substance and no style, No Wave made expressive use of volume and rhythm, with barked monosyllabic vocals reducing language to primal phonetics. Yet despite No Wave’s aggressively inarticulate stance, most of its players were more selfconscious than first wave punks, their assault on form more deliberate than intuited. No Wave was a signal moment in that it represented a deliberate attempt to fuse volatile elements from various avant garde disciplines with rock aesthetics and a post-punk DIY ethos. Guitarist and composer Glenn Branca was one of the first of this group of players to fully articulate this bent polygot. In No Wave’s eviscerated forms, he divined a new kind of minimalism, one that had more to do with the claustrophobic street noise echoing around the skyscraping sound mirrors of downtown than the meditative headspaces of Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. For The Ascension, Branca stuck to the pummeling rhythms and studiously artless downstrokes that characterized No Wave, but added massed guitars, some with multiple strings tuned to the same note. Branca and his then regular group – guitarists Lee Ranaldo, Ned Sublette, David Rosenbloom, bassist Jeffrey Glenn and drummer Stephen Wischerth – work through the implications of this approach, still a rock group but now boasting an orchestral reach. Tracks like “Lesson no. 2″ and “The Spectacular Commodity” anticipate groups like Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore also passed through Branca’s ranks), Swans and Savage Republic, but the title track – a 13 minute instrumental speaking in tongues unknown-remains inviolable. Between them the four guitarists generate an unearthly torrent, rising through a series of metallic plateaux that dissolve like breath with the sudden shift of a chord. In the sleevenotes Lee Ranaldo bemoans the fact that the guitars were close miked in the studio, claiming that the lack of room tone robs the recording of the kind of power they were able to channel when agitating the volume of air in a concert hall or club; but it’s precisely the music’s unyielding quality and eye-level fury that marks The Ascension out as something else entirely. Call it a Heavy Metal symphony, punk rock minimalism, avant drone, whatever you want. It’s a beautiful noise.

03.30.2010, 04:53 PM	#1
donfortissimo empty page Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 2	Glenn Branca - The Ascension 180g white vinyl, ltd to 1000. Order now at www.fortissimorecords.co.uk http://www.facebook.com/#%21/photo.php?pid=5516210&op=1&o=global&view=global&su bj=583152166&id=505060820 Press for the CD reissue on Acute Records: David bowie picks his favorite 25 records Bought in Zurich, Switzerland. This was an impulse buy. The cover got me. Robert Longo produced what is essentially the best cover art of the 80s (and beyond, some would say). Mysterious in the religious sense, Renaissance angst dressed in Mugler. And on the inside…Well, what at first sounds like dissonance is soon assimilated as a play on the possibilities of overtones from massed guitars. Not minimalism, exactly – unlike LaMonte Young and his work within the harmonic system, Branca uses the overtones produced by the vibration of a guitar string. Amplified and reproduced by many guitars simultaneously, you have an effect akin to the drone of Tibetan Buddhist monks but much, much, much louder. Two key players in Branca’s band were future composer David Rosenbloom (the terrific Souls of Chaos, 1984) and Lee Ranaldo, founding figure with Thurston Moore of the great Sonic Youth. Over the years, Branca got even louder and more complex than this, but here on the title track his manifesto is already complete. Careless Talk Saves Lives July 2003 Jon Dale Finally, Glenn Branca’s classic “The Ascension” has just been reissued by Acute, and, as you would expect, it’s magnificent, huge and dense and threshing and full of miraculous clouds of overtone hover and viciously breathed guitar heaviness. It’s a classic piece of NYC loft process-rock brutalism that no home should live without. And if that’s not enough, the sheer sonic violence of the two-minute solo performance, captured on film and appended to the disc, is one of the most exhilirating things I’ve heard since Keiji Haino first blatted my head’s way. And, really, can you ask for more than that? Kerrang, June 21 2003 Ben Myers Guitar-mangling pioneer on an undiscovered alt-rock classic. The missing link between Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca played a pivotal role in the evolution of guitar music. Deconstructing the electric guitar and rebuilding it as howling, clunking, feedback-drenched symphonies that utilized multiple players, his work owes just as much to the experimental sounds of Philip Glass as The Stooges. Cutting his teeth alongside the NY punks of the late ’70s, Branca’s “The Ascension” (released in 1981) features future Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and is one of the great undiscovered gems of no wave/alternative rock. Nihilism, discordance, chaos and tightly-wound musicianship are the order of the day here, ‘pieces’ such as “The Ascension” and the 12-minute “The Spectacular Commodity” the 1980’s underground’s versions of the ‘1812 Overture’. In a word: visionary. NME, June 14th 2003 Louis Pattison New York visionary’s symphonic guitar piece While most of his downtown contemporaries seemed set on dragging punk rock into the gutter, Glenn Branca had a higher purpose. On 1981’s “The Ascension”, four guitars are gathered into a shrieking symphony, multiple strings tuned to the same note to ratchet up the sheer aural overload. It’s by turns gratingly shrill and starkly beautiful – like the ghost of Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’ channeled into a towering Marshall stack. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo plays here, and Thurston Moore would later join Branca’s ranks. But while the Youth derived much from this monolithic maelstrom, they would never better it. 9 The Telegraph, June 14th 2003 Lynsey Hanley In recent years, Glenn Branca has come to be associated more with the classical end of avant-garde music, alongside Philip Glass and Steve Reich, creating mesmerizing, repetitive tone cycles as part of his eponymous Ensemble. But he started out making experimental rock music with the likes of Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, who went on to infiltrate the mainstream as members of Sonic Youth. Recorded in 1981, this album, released for the first time on CD, features Ranaldo as one of four guitarists that Branca put together in an attempt to trample over the limitations of the more conventional new wave sounds of the time. Like Patti Smith and Television, his musicians came out of the exhilaratingly pretentious scene that centred around downtown New York in the late 1970s. On each of the five compositions they wield their guitars like harmonious power tools, frightening and often ear-splitting in their strength. Not the easiest of records to listen to, but still sounding thrillingly new 22 years after its first release. Uncut, June 2003 Jim Allen Overdue reissue of No Wave classic — five stars The guitar wizard at the forefront of NYC late-70s/early-’80s “No Wave”, Glenn Branca mated contemporary classical structure with ear-splitting noise-rock in a manner that served both camps equally well, influencing avant noiseniks from Sonic Youth on. Branca’s second release for NY underground label 99 (home to ESG, Liquid Liquid, etc) is reissued here in all its multi-timbral glory, as sheets of cascading guitars carefully negotiate the balance between chaos and control. Extras like a live video clip and notes from Branca’s sideman/future Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo sweeten the pot. The Wire, June 2003 David Keenan Originally released in 1981 on 99 records, Glenn Branca’s The Ascension provides a fantastic snapshot of a transitional moment in the history of New York’s downtown music. It represents the first attempt to rebuild on ground previously leveled by No Wave groups Mars, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Red Transistor and Branca’s own The Static and Theoretical Girls. No Wave was primarily fuelled by profound acts of reversal and subtraction, where any overt notions of melody, form and musicianship were stripped out in favour of a more elemental and emotionally direct attack. All substance and no style, No Wave made expressive use of volume and rhythm, with barked monosyllabic vocals reducing language to primal phonetics. Yet despite No Wave’s aggressively inarticulate stance, most of its players were more selfconscious than first wave punks, their assault on form more deliberate than intuited. No Wave was a signal moment in that it represented a deliberate attempt to fuse volatile elements from various avant garde disciplines with rock aesthetics and a post-punk DIY ethos. Guitarist and composer Glenn Branca was one of the first of this group of players to fully articulate this bent polygot. In No Wave’s eviscerated forms, he divined a new kind of minimalism, one that had more to do with the claustrophobic street noise echoing around the skyscraping sound mirrors of downtown than the meditative headspaces of Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. For The Ascension, Branca stuck to the pummeling rhythms and studiously artless downstrokes that characterized No Wave, but added massed guitars, some with multiple strings tuned to the same note. Branca and his then regular group – guitarists Lee Ranaldo, Ned Sublette, David Rosenbloom, bassist Jeffrey Glenn and drummer Stephen Wischerth – work through the implications of this approach, still a rock group but now boasting an orchestral reach. Tracks like “Lesson no. 2″ and “The Spectacular Commodity” anticipate groups like Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore also passed through Branca’s ranks), Swans and Savage Republic, but the title track – a 13 minute instrumental speaking in tongues unknown-remains inviolable. Between them the four guitarists generate an unearthly torrent, rising through a series of metallic plateaux that dissolve like breath with the sudden shift of a chord. In the sleevenotes Lee Ranaldo bemoans the fact that the guitars were close miked in the studio, claiming that the lack of room tone robs the recording of the kind of power they were able to channel when agitating the volume of air in a concert hall or club; but it’s precisely the music’s unyielding quality and eye-level fury that marks The Ascension out as something else entirely. Call it a Heavy Metal symphony, punk rock minimalism, avant drone, whatever you want. It’s a beautiful noise.
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