AMG Review of Glenn Branca: Symphony No. 2 "The Peak of the Sacred"

"Blue" Gene Tyranny
All Music Guide

The legendary live performance at St. Mary's Church on May 14, 1982. Scored for eight mallet guitars, taped harmonic guitars, bass drums, metal percussion and drums. The first movement, "Slow Mass," has magnificently dense, giant clusters and scale patterns describing the image of a slowly moving soundmass. The second movement, entitled "Radioactive Poltergeist Kitchen 1955," features Z'ev on metal percussion with gradually more massive electronically amplified crashing and random forms, punctuated at times by blasts from the drums and guitars. The third movement, "Melodrama and Nuclear Physics in the Global Theater," features sustained soft and sharp, densely layered harmonic textures that float in and around the space. The fourth movement, "Sacred Field," brings in a mass of drum rhythms, rattling metal sheets, and gradually building harmonic masses. "In the Late 20th Century the Impossible Becomes Possible (short excerpt)" is the concluding movement, and begins with mallet guitar strokes that sound like church bells.