Glenn Branca Interview: Sounds From the Subconscious



“I had to squeeze the music out of that thing!” Feel the good vibes in this laid back interview with legendary American avant-garde composer and noise-guitarist Glenn Branca, who has influenced bands like Sonic Youth.

“I want people to do what they want to do, not what culture wants them to do. ” In this interview Glenn Branca talks about how he learned to play on a guitar which was really cheap and hard to play, and how he feels lucky to have been a young man in the ’60s, when there was an explosion of good music and lots of amazing sounds to get into. Branca is always looking for new sounds and his primary interest is “opening music up to ambiguity,” he says. We all see things in our own way Branca adds, “the subconscious is a very important part of my music.” Branca’s aim is to confuse the conscious mind, breaking it open, “allowing us to access the subconscious.”

Glenn Branca (b.1948) is known for his experimental use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Glenn Branca was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg at Drop Inn & Huset-KBH with artFREQ, Radical High Culture, Copenhagen, Denmark, February 2014.

Photography by Steen Møller Rasmussen

Edited by Kasper Bech Dyg

Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, produced by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

Supported by Nordea-fonden.

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