Requiem for Molly

The centerpiece of Requia runs through four parts of 7:40, 7:46, 2:33 and 3:00. Solo guitar is interspersed with and accompanied by white noise, excerpts of string and brass orchestras, Adolf Hitler speeches, choral music, scratchy 78s and various tape loops and sound effects. The melody in Part 3 is California Dreamin', then a recent Top 40 hit for the Mamas and the Papas. Fahey described it as his first attempt at musique concrete, adding that it was not very good and that he did not really like it, though it was a good learning experience.

Early reviewers were mostly hostile. Kris Needs of Record Collector later cited its snatches of jazz and blues singers, Nazi marching songs, wedding music, hymns, brass bands, fairground organ and self-recorded seals as a deranged mosaic of effects that predated sampling. The Uncut writer John Robinson said the guitar is mixed deep into a shifting soundworld of sucking reverb and white noise, and in his book Beautiful Monsters Michael Long called it a spatiotextural experiment in sampling, looping and musique concrete. Brian Olewnick of AllMusic thought the source material sounded heavy-handed and trite in retrospect.