Customer Reviews

Branca: Symphony 1

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have no idea where some of the other people reviewing this album are on, especially the one that likes to go around giving instrumental bands 1-star reviews and praising Nickelback and Creed. With that being said, this CD is awesome! This is definetly at the top of Branca's list along with The Ascension and Lesson No.1. The sound on this CD is massive, I believe he had 16 musicians on this symphony. This is music for people with open-minds. Excellent.

the comments of the people before have been very disapointing and very ignorant. This peice is a masterwork of giagantic porportions very itricitly composed. The ignorant narrow-minded naysayers below me just dont understand anything that pushes the limits

This is a must have for anyone that isnt an ignorant narrow minded naysayer but even for them it is truely a must have

The legendary Glen Branca album, could be called avant garde classical music, but really more like the sound of an army of guitars with percussion and some horns. Thurston and Lee from Sonic Youth played in it, and the wave of dissonant guitars is quite recognizable, only without bass or vocals. It's called a symphony, and was supposedly done in four continuous parts, but it really sounds like four distinct pieces that were recorded live and range from 10 minutes to 17 minutes in length. The longest one is also the coolest one - it just drones and drones and drones. Nice.

This is minimalist music resembling somewhat Steve Reich's stuff. It is actually not bad at all. You have Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo on it. While it is not the garbage some people wrote it is also not high art.

This symphony by Glenn Branca is great! Each movement is as powerful and rockish as the last while managing to be quite different from the one that proceeds it. The first movement is a rocking tour de force based around a simple E chord and its harmonies, dissonances, etc. The drums are pounding and primal on this one. The second movement is like psuedo-gamelan music, with lots of choked cymbals, chimes, horn blats, and things of that sort. The third movement builds around a throbbing guitar-and-horn, um, (I'm at a loss for words) which is eventually accompanied by rolling, thudding drums, crescendoing and becoming more and more startling in its power until it ends abruptly at about 17 minutes and 30 seconds. The fourth and final movement starts with simple, thudding percussion (including metal barrels), accompanied by low-pitched guitars, and slowly, gradually begins to change, and is all in all, a great finish to the piece.
Branca has composed a near-masterwork with this symphony, and to the reviewer who claimed you could do this with your kid brother and his buddies in your basement, I'd like to see him try. I look forward to purchasing more of Branca's compositions in the future.

With his first extended work in four movements for multiple electric guitars (and other instruments), Branca reaffirms what Virgil Thompson once said about American music: to be an American composer, all you have to be is born in America. While it remains debatable whether the work call truly be called a symphony, what is certain is that the music is powerful, the energy is relentless, and the ideas resonate long after the last movement ends. As a composer, Branca may not be Bruckner, but the birth pangs are fun to hear in this his first symphony.

To call Branca a composer is like calling someone's nose-picking Art. He is without a doubt the most talentless, the most uninteresting, the most humorless tertiary affiliate of the music scene, a man comfortable neither in the world of progressive rock (he has no rhythm, no chops, no ear) nor that of serious, i.e., classical music (he has no understanding of composition--I doubt he even knows how the circle of five works). It really doesn't matter how many guitarists he's got for this particular recording. They all sound terrible because the music Braca "wrote" is terrible. Just one monotonous strum on all six strings after another, with no rhyme or reason. You can do this with your kid brother and his twelve-year-old buddies anytime of the day in the luxury of your own basement. And you'll have more fun listening to the result taped on your beat-up radio afterward.

I've heard so many people tout Glenn Branca as the single most important artist in the past 2 decades. That's a pretty loft claim to live up to. Laughably, he falls ENTIRELY short. This is amassed, dissonant ("out-of-tune" would be the more appropriate phrase here), amusical GARBAGE. What Branca has composed here is utter crap, and the crappiness of the music itself is only augmented by the musicians involved with performing it, in particular, Stephan Wiscerth's awful drumming. I understand that Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, Michael Gira, and (less importantly) Page Hamilton have all played with him, but do not let that fool you -- Branca's music is completely unredeeming, humorless, and pretentious to the point of ridiculousness. Don't be fooled!