Hallucination City

Hallucination City is a composition by the American No Wave artist Glenn Branca. This piece for 100 guitars was premiered in New York in 2001. It was performed in open air, in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Kyle Gann in his review of this performance for The Village Voice: “Structurally, it was perhaps Branca’s most impressive work ever, filling out 62 minutes with no movement breaks. It started out purely consonant, repeating simple rising motives. Starting at a deafening level, the work got louder almost throughout, and – after a stasis of a few minutes that could have signaled an ending – suddenly burst into tensely rising chromatic scales.”