“What I most respect about Glenn Branca is that he’s an absolute original,” the composer Steve Reich told The Times in 1995. More than music, though, Mr. Branca was interested in theater, which he later studied at Emerson College in Boston. He also worked in a record store, where, he said, he listened to virtually every album in stock. Mr. Branca and his confederates built a devoted audience with works that were loud and unpredictable and that formed the basis of Mr. Branca’s later concert pieces. And in the late 1970s he started a record label, Neutral, which released early recordings by Swans and Sonic Youth.

Source: New York Times May 15, 2018 20:15 UTC