We’re sat in the darkened breakfast bar of a chain hotel just beyond the Parisian périphérique. Branca, sixty-four years old with greying hair swept back and a slight cloudiness to his eyes suggestive of incipient cataracts, wears a heavy black...

We’re sat in the darkened breakfast bar of a chain hotel just beyond the Parisian périphérique. Branca, sixty-four years old with greying hair swept back and a slight cloudiness to his eyes suggestive of incipient cataracts, wears a heavy black jacket with half a dozen different pens in the breast pocket. A twilight blue scarf hangs down across a green jumper in rough-hewn wool. The former guitarist in no wave bands Theoretical Girls and The Static, turned composer of epic electric guitar orchestras that once featured the young Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, wears his black shirt with the collar popped up.

“When free improvisation first broke out – ” he doesn’t so much speak as growl, a throaty east coast drawl with a nicotine rasp like a traction engine “ – mainly starting with Coltrane. I mean, really free improvisation – ” his fingers, usually steepled on the table in front of him, briefly extricate themselves to gesture a little theatrically, shades of the actor he once was, “ – it was interesting,” he concedes, somewhat philosophically. “For instance, there was a really fantastic band called the Art Ensemble of Chicago – I don’t know if they’re still around anymore or not. I mean, oh man, they could blow the roof off the house…”

Read my full interview with Glenn Branca at The Quietus (which now, by the way, includes a reply to some of the comments it received from Branca himself)

05/07/13 at 5:10pm