I can’t believe that after the punishment I put my ears through the other night that I would follow that with a performance of Glenn Branca’s Symphony #13.  Hallucination City, that is.  The one for 100 electric guitars.  As it was at the Roundhouse, I could at least dull my pain receptors beforehand with some rum cocktails from Cotton’s Rhum Shack over the road.  Mine’s a Jamaican Mule, thanks.  With a Barbancourt chaser. 

First, some numbers.  100 guitarists (each being paid, I believe £0), divided into 10 rows of 10, with different rows having their guitars tuned to alto, tenor, bass and baritone.  1 drummer at the back.  4 sections, entitled “March”, “Anthem”, “Drive” and “Vengeance”.  And the important one: 130 decibels.  As “March” is counted in by the conductor John Myers, the classicism of the piece is notable – there is sheet music, strict tempo, different rows being brought in and out of the ensemble by a flick of the wrist, and there is counting.  Lots of counting.  The conductor is counting bars to help everyone stay in the right place, and a couple of guitarists down front are mouthing their one-two-three-fours.

It starts to get interesting in “Anthem”, when a section of chiming notes is curtailed by another of furious guitar scrubbing (I’d like to see the transcription of that).  Myers is gesticulating wildly, every wave forwards and backwards of his arm seems to produce a roar of sound, the orchestra is very much his instrument.  “Drive” starts with some discordant notes; before the drummer drives the piece forward into a section of white-out noise, and for the first time the piece breaks free from its anchor, getting faster and faster, and louder and louder.  The volume is upped yet further on “Vengeance” after a period in which Myers exhorts the players to play as quietly as possible. The guitars crash back in like thunder, and the ensuing racket is ferocious.  It sounds like the most incredible hailstorm battering a corrugated iron roof; it is clear why Branca describes the Hallucination City orchestra as being like a nuclear weapon.  They do the shhhhhhh/RAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR thing once more, just to make sure you got it, and then it is finished, the last notes decay to a ringing in my ears.  The floppily-haired Branca lolloped up on stage to give us the briefest of waves (and his guitarists the gratefulest of gratitude), but I was too busy clapping to get a picture of that. 

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