Waiting for the magic is part of any Glenn Branca performance. Inevitably, it does come, whether he’s leading a corps of guitarists, drummers, and bassists through one of his bold electric symphonies or guiding a small ensemble through the often microtonal turns of his compositions. When he played performance space AS220 in Providence last Saturday night, it arrived about 30 minutes into the one-number set. There was Branca, his black-and-gray-streaked hair falling over his face as he knelt on the floor over his harmonic guitar (an instrument fashioned by joining a pair of electric six-strings together by their necks), using a slide to tease fresh sounds out of the howl of punishingly loud feedback. And suddenly the air was split by something akin to the trumpeting of a baritone elephant. He moved his slide a few tics and it changed pitch. Then there were bursts of a choir — a sound like angelic voices hitting a single high-note "ah" again and again. Somehow his guitar’s low end started burping out percussive blats that sounded like a group of hand-drummers pattering an African rhythm.

Branca’s ability to conjure sounds from the overlapping tones of hyper-amplified instruments is his stock in trade. The difference with this performance is that it was only the fourth time he’d done it with a small band, just four players, in roughly 25 years. The date was part of the first tour, which had stopped at Cambridge’s T.T. the Bear’s Place the night before, of Branca-Bloor, the new band he’s formed with his wife. Guitarist Reg Bloor was an economical player, plying her picking hand like a buzzsaw as she dished out the ascending and descending slide lines and chords that were the still-evolving piece’s structural girders. She also cued bassist Ryan Walsh, who ran rag-team with her climbs up and down the range of her instrument — played at delicious head-splitting volume through a Marshall amp — and through accelerations and decelerations in picking. Drummer Tony Cenicola was a subdued but powerful presence, keeping a straight-ahead, high-speed power-rock beat through the entire piece without slowing for a breath.

Usually Branca conducts his works, but this project marks his return to the stage as a player — and one with a sense of theater. He began by taking the stage wearing glasses, with his thick hair combed back, looking every bit the serious composer. After a few minutes, however, he became a disheveled maniac, dancing an indie-rock version of the James Brown shuffle in his dirty Converse sneakers, spastically covering the stage as if the sounds of his harmonic guitar were being torn from his body.