Y PANTS

Y PANTS

Y Pants were an all girl three piece art-rock band from New York city in the late seventies early 80's known for stripped down art-performance no wave minus the jagged screeching guitars but rather using a much quieter assult of thumb drums, ukeles and various toy instruments. Formed by Gail Vachon, Virginia "Verge" Piersol, and Barbara Ess who was an integral part of the NYC no wave emergence having been a prior member of Theoretical Girls and Static with her then boyfriend Glenn Branca. Branca produced their rare 1980 debut Ep on 99 records with the Rolling Stones cover "Off the Hook' reminiscent of The Slits, The RainCoats, and ESG. The band Later recorded a full length album titled Beat it Down produced by Wharton Tiers and released on Glenn Brancas Neutral Label in 1982. The Band was short lived as the broke up to follow their careers in Film, and Writing.

Barbars Ess (bass, ukulele, thumb drum, vocals)

Verge Piersol (drums, vocals)

Gail Vachon (keyboards, ukulele, vocals

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Glenn Branca

In terms of musical architecture its hard to imagine what our record collections would look like without the first two albums by Glenn Branca Lesson No.1 and The Ascension. Glenn Branca is an extremely influential avant-garde composer who's experimental roots in the No Wave band The Theoretical Girls formed in 1977 with friend and producer Wharton Teirs laid the foundation for No Wave bands in New York City in the late seventies and the 1980's post-punk noise rock to follow. Forming his first avant-garde experimental guitar orchestra in the early 80's Branca's line-up of musicians included Lee Renaldo, Thurston Moore, and Michael Gira which spawned Sonic Youth and Swans and paved the way for much of the indie rock as we know it today. Around 1980 Branca created compositions for guitar ensembles and orchestras of droning electric guitars and percussion. On Lesson No.1 and The Ascension, Branca's first two solo albums, the chiming, droning guitars, squalls of feedback, sledgehammers, dissonance, mallet guitars, and cacophonous tribal rhythms mark Branca's work as the first of its kind in rock music mixing composers like La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass with guitar work of the likes of Captain Beefheart, Joy Division. Lesson No.1 was the first album released on NYC no-wave label Ze records and is a suiting title for an album as important in experimental music as it is. Branca has gone on to create 15 symphonies including a remarkable piece written for a French Organization called 2000 Guitars in celebration for the millenium that Branca was not excited about so he scrapped it because of the technical monstrosity of orchestrating 2000 guitars. He reluctantly later performed the piece as Symphony No.13: Hallucination City stripped down for 100 Guitars for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York City consisting of a phenomenal group of 100 guitarists and a single drummer. 

Glenn Branca Website | Glenn Branca Info