8 SPRING STREET was written in homage to the composer Glenn Branca.

I became aware of Glenn's music in the late 1970s No Wave scene in downtown New York City, first with the group Theoretical Girls and then The Static. Both groups had a connection with the visual artist and theorist Dan Graham, who saw, particularly in Glenn's interests, a critical dialogue with sonic composition and conceptual art.
I found myself fascinated, indeed in an epiphanic moment, with Glenn's work for multiple electric guitars in alternate tunings, after seeing a performance for six guitars and percussion at the legendary A Space on Broome Street in 1979.
What transpired was an amalgam of so many sounds and actions I had been entranced by with punk rock, art rock, no wave, free jazz, free improvisation and contemporary academic composition. In retrospect I realize I brought my own inclusionary desires to this reception of Glenn's music as my intrigues and pleasures were, as I would learn, less critical than Glenn's focus.
Soon thereafter I answered a want-ad in the Soho Weekly News for guitarists willing to play in "weird tunings", please call Glenn Branca. I visited him at his small apartment at 8 Spring Street, not so dissimilar, or very far, from where I resided at 84 Eldridge Street (one floor below Dan Graham).
Glenn had a myriad of cheap electric guitars propped everywhere, many with their headstocks shaved into a spear-like point. He asked me if I could double strum and if I could play harmonics. These were two techniques I had been already immersed in and I believe I proved myself a considerable candidate for his new ensemble. I was struck by Glenn talking about how he listened to the whirring of the electric fan in his window, entranced by it's overtones, and wanting to transpose the sound to guitars. I left thinking I had the gig but he didn't hire me. What I subsequently heard was that he didn't want to the one to constrict me, thinking I was too young and wild (we had a ten years age difference). I liked that, but I really wanted to play in his ensemble. Never the less, it was not too long before I was asked to join.
Lee Ranaldo had already been doing some time playing with Glenn's ensembles. Lee's band The Flucts had performed at CBGB with The Coachmen, the band I was in at the time, and we would soon begin to play together in what would eventually become Sonic Youth. Glenn would release our initial recording as the first salvo on his Neutral Records label. When he heard that we needed extra guitars to work out new ideas on, he excitedly walked from 8 Spring Street to 84 Eldridge Street with an armful of spear-headed axes for us to have our way with.
Glenn was a force of nature, both charming and acerbic, intense, intelligent and incredibly demanding. He created music to shake the world to it's foundation and to come face to face with the essence of divine energy he openly, and with great volume, contemplated and called to. An obsession I have always connected with and been inspired by.
Glenn had me guest with his 2007 ensemble in a one-off concert in the UK, but it was in early 2014 when we last saw each other while sharing a bill at la Machine du Moulin Rouge in Paris. At this point in time both our lives, personal and professional, had been experiencing emotional, psychic and all-together natural states of change, movement, struggle and beauty.
It would be another four years before Glenn would pass away but on that warm post-concert evening, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, it brought me a great delight to see this complicated and amazing iconoclast of modern Rock music having found simple joy in the enlightenment we all hope for. True love.

The score for 8 Spring Street can be for one solo electric guitar or for many. Its signature is a response to a motif of Glenn's where the note structure is in repetitive, and downward, development. I flip the motif to move upward and allow a personal lexicon to develop. The tuning is D# D# A# A# C# D#.