The distinctive strum and squall of the electric guitar may resound across countless stadiums worldwide, but the collective blast of 100 electric guitars may have even the most hardened heavy-metal fan reaching for his earplugs. Yet in the backyard of a quiet Mexican restaurant in Greenwich Village, a strawberry margarita in hand, the New York composer Glenn Branca is bristling with enthusiasm about the “big, vicious sound” he has written for just such an ensemble.

If ever a piece of music went “up to 11”, as Spinal Tap insisted, this is it. Eighty guitarists and 20 bass players have volunteered to wield their axes for a rare performance of Branca’s Symphony No 13, Hallucination City, at the Roundhouse in London next week. But Stairway to Heaven this isn’t.

Branca was a noisy upstart of the abrasive “No Wave” New York scene of the late 1970s and a mentor of rock bands such as Sonic Youth. Yet he considers himself to be a serious composer – albeit one who feels shunned by the “straight” scene of contemporary classical music and aloof from the thrashed-out catharsis of rock. After an early career in theatre, his emphasis is still on work of dramatic proportions – large-scale pieces for guitars or conventional orchestras that, on his terms, “kick ass”.

“This is not just about 100 Jimmy Pages getting up there and jamming or something; this is very much an orchestra,” he says of Hallucination City. “Every beat of every damn measure is written down and conducted. It’s just an orchestra that’s about ten times as loud as any you’ve ever heard in your life.”

The symphony has evolved over more than half a dozen performances into four movements with unequivocal titles: March, Anthem, Drive and Vengeance. The result, still to be recorded, is by all accounts an unrelenting crescendo, “like an aircraft tearing into the earth”.

Branca, dressed entirely in black and with a cigarette, shrugs off the accusation of self-indulgence. “I am the most pretentious person on the face of the Earth,” he declares, “but I’ve always tried to make powerful artistic statements, confronting the audience in what I thought of as a Brechtian way – that idea of the alienation effect.

“My music isn’t for everybody; it’s not pop music by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve always done things that I would like to go and see. I like things that are going to challenge me, things that are going to f*** with my perception. As it turned out, in New York and elsewhere, I’ve met a hell of a lot more people who are like me.” Those people include more than 500 guitarists who e-mailed Branca and his wife, the guitarist Regina Bloor, to volunteer for the Roundhouse concert, organised by the Frieze Art Fair.

“The response has been tremendous,” Branca says. “We’ve done this seven or eight times and it’s worked out very well each time but, as the musicians are not paid, it takes months of recruiting and we do it on trust.” First the musicians are asked if they can read music, follow a score and attend two day-long rehearsals. Following Branca’s directions they are also required to retune and restring their guitars to produce alto, tenor, baritone and bass sections.

“There’s no screening, no auditions but, once people see their parts, we get at least a 50 per cent drop-out rate. It’s not monstrously difficult; there’s no virtuoso playing involved, but it does require some work.”

The symphony was originally conceived for 2,000 players, he says, “by a committee in Paris who were putting on a millenium festival for 2000. I personally thought it was absurd and told my agent so, and they hadn’t really thought of the logistics. When they worked out the budget would be $1 million, it was cancelled.” After a second invitation came from New York, he bargained down the organisers from 200, and the work received its premiere at the base of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

While he feels an affinity with symphonic titans such as Mahler and Bruckner, the sustained, often hypnotic quality of Branca’s music places it firmly in the minimalist tradition. He owes as much to Philip Glass and Steve Reich as he does to the Sex Pistols.

But some modern musicians have been repelled by Branca’s works, including the late composer John Cage, who described the music in terms of “evil and power”. “I don’t want such a power in my life,” Cage declared. “If it was something political it would resemble fascism.” Branca claims that the grudge developed over his “old-fashioned” compositional methods.

As Cage and his rock protegés experimented with scores based on improvisation and chance operations, or insisted on making music “democratically” in a band format, the notion of “just one guy laying his trip on people” fell out of favour, Branca says. “Because I write music down on paper I’m a fascist dictator of some kind? What kind of stupidity is this?

“I love great improvised music but I really think that the good work needs to be composed. I wouldn’t want to read a novel that was improvised by three or four different people. Why should it be any different with music?”

And while others – such as Branca’s multi-guitar rival Rhys Chatham - have scored for up to 400 electric guitars, Hallucination City is not purely about grandiosity, he says. “To be honest I was surprised by how much transparency there was in the sound. I thought I was going to have the same problems you get with ten guitars – things sound way too dense, you have trouble writing a lot of counterpoint or separate voices.

“The truth of the matter is that Wagner and Mahler and Bruckner would love to have played this loud – I guarantee you. It’s like having access to your own nuclear weapon or something. It’s a musician’s dream.”

— Glenn Branca’s Symphony No 13, the Roundhouse, London NW1, October 12 (0870 4000688)

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