It was a beautiful, sunny, Wintry afternoon. Orange leaves were scattered over the pavement at the entrance to the Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park. Days of work had gone in to creating a vista of modern art from the galleries of Berlin and Warsaw to Sao Paulo and New York. ‘This can only be good’, I thought, in high expectation.

The art was disappointing though. I don’t want to dismiss the work of 1000 artists in one sentence. Between the papier-mached, 3-foot high pink blobs, close-up colour photos of eyes decorated with disco-glitter eyeshadow and a rotating, angular mirror installation there were some fine pieces. But, after an hour of strolling around, as my friend said, the over-riding impression was that artists today want to make something that just looks ‘silly.’ I found it hard to disagree. It was art as joke.

Luckily the arts fair had satellite events and the one I went to was impressive, strange and original. It was a performance of Glenn Branca’s Symphony No.13: Hallucination City performed by 100 electric guitars (and a drum kit) on stage at Camden’s Roundhouse theatre, directed by the composer himself.

I didn’t know what to expect. It just sounded an original thing to listen and watch. Were they going to make 100 electric guitars sound like a full orchestra? Would they reveal the full spectrum of guitar sounds? What musical story would be invoked?

Crash! BReeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! One hundred electric guitars double-strummed in a minor chord for ages and it was difficult to work out where it was going. Everybody stood still apart from a couple of people in the standing-room only area who were gently headbanging. Alan Yentob, the BBC’s Creative Director, was among a few, walking slowly around the theatre, drink in hand, no doubt, noddying to the beat.

There were four movements to the work. The conductor made a 4/4 beat vigorously throughout. Overall the monotone screeching gave way eventually to an emerging base beat that was only just audible with the rest. It was easy to say ‘what a racket’. By the end of over an hour, the whole effect captured your senses and you started to hear that perhaps 70 guitarists were playing angry music, another 20 were following the drum beats in rhythm and the others were filling in the blanks with their own (what sounded like) 3 or 4 chords played repeatedly. They were all playing, it seemed, a certain state of mind from anguish, to ‘don’t care’ to ‘I’m angry, sexy, and proud’! It was like travelling through a disgruntled person’s hot, hormonal-driven mind while standing in a freezer.

During one of the intervals, my friend whispered, ‘I’ll give you £100 if you request ‘Back in Black’ or ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’!’ I was tempted. So many guitars playing either of those would have been a sound to behold. I found out afterwards that it might have been more appropriate to shout, ‘How about ‘God Save the Queen!’?’ Branca used to be a member of the New York punk outfit Theoretical Girls. Branca’s early punk sensibility mixed with abstract thought had morphed in to this fantastic 100 electrical guitars spectacle where you could get lost in deafening sounds, erupting occasionally in to a virtually inaudible rhythm.

There was something satisfying in letting your ears search for the rhythm through all the chaos. At the end of one movement, you were rewarded. All the guitars stopped and the remnants of their sound appeared to swallow itself down an aural, dark cave. Impressive.

Tessa Mayes is a London-based journalist and author.