Music Reviews from the Staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House

 

August 23, 2020
Susan Alcorn in 2020
Let there be no secret about it. The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House are fans of the music of Susan Alcorn. Since 2017, we have included her music in the course taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, The Golden Age of Non-Idiomatic Improvisation. We also had the privilege of publishing an enlightening interview with her in An International Journal of Exploratory Meta-Living. In this review, we discuss the unexpected abundance of eight (!) new releases and reissues of Alcorn's music that have appeared thus far in 2020.

 

Title: In / Heaven
Artists: Mark Trecka & Susan Alcorn / Midwife
Label: Flenser Records
Catalog #: FR112
Country: United States
Release Date: August, 2020
Media: cassette and digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

This cassette release by Flenser Records consists of two tracks. On side A, there is a 17-minute duet by Mark Trecka & Susan Alcorn titled In Ellipsis Landscapes. On side B, there is a 17-minute duet by Randall Taylor and Madeline Johnston, collectively going under the name Midwife, titled Heaven.

In this review, we limit our comments to side A. From the first notes of the track, the listener is immediately drawn into a hypnotic and contemplative exploration of a landscape defined by the ellipsis. What is an ellipsis? According to Oxford, the ellipsis is "the act of leaving out a word or words from a sentence deliberately, when the meaning can be understood without them". We understand then that this music is defined as much by what is played as the notes that the musicians choose not to play. We listened to this recording many times, though never once on the cassette, which we purchased as a sign of our commitment to existence in a material world! In truth, we feared that our Onkyo dual tape deck component from the 1980's could not be trusted with treating the tape kindly. Rather we were compelled to listen to the digital download repeatedly. In any case, we were so taken with this piece that we opted to lead off this collective review with it.

As a note for the curious, on the crowd-sourced resource of discogs.com, the profile for Flenser Records describes it in the following terms, "The Flenser is a San Francisco label releasing black metal, doom and other dark music." It remains unclear whether this description is inaccurate or whether this particular release stands as an anomaly in the label repertoire, but we could find no attributes of this bouyant music to which the appellation "black metal", "doom" or "dark" seemed appropriate.

 

Title: Ajax Peak
Artists: Susan Alcorn & Tom Carter
Label: Drawing Room Records
Catalog #: DRLP00035
Country: United States
Release Date: June, 2020
Media: lp and digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

There is no reason that we could not have started this review with Ajax Peak. Indeed, that was our initial intention because this is an entire album of electric guitar and pedal steel guitar duets from Tom Carter and Susan Alcorn respectively. It is forty-one minutes of creative improvisation of the highest caliber. As is noted in the liner notes on Bandcamp, During this extremely difficult junction in US history, a portion of cash proceeds and profits from "Ajax Peak" will go to Black Lives Matter and the Black Visions Collective. "Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist. Keep loving. Keep fighting.". This is music in which the good message is implicitly and explicitly clear.

One hopes that the message is received by well-intentioned ears until the limited edition of 150 vinyl records is exhausted and the unlimited digital reserves are plumbed!

 

Title: Sister Mirror
Artists: Janel Leppin, Susan Alcorn & Meghan Habibzai
Label: Atlantic Rhythms
Catalog #: AR-34
Country: United States
Release Date: August, 2020
Media: cassette and digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

This release appeared several months after the Alcorn/Leppin collaboration, The Heart Sutra described immediately below. Of related provenance, Sister Mirror captures "a very special live recording of longtime improvisers Leppin and pedal steelist Susan Alcorn at the 2640 Space in Baltimore, Maryland in 2012." For listeners who only know Baltimore in the divisive language of the forty-fifth president of the United States (aka Douchebag J. Trogolodyte) as a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested" mess, this music serves as a wake-up call and provides but one example of the beauty that has emerged from "Charm City".

The first track is a duet with Leppin and vocalist Meghan Habibzai, while the last ten tracks are Leppin/Alcorn duets on cello & pedal steel guitar. Some of the Leppin/Alcorn tracks are untitled improvisations and others are interpretations of compositions that have appeared on earlier Alcorn solo releases including Gilmore Blue from Touch this Moment  (2010), Suite for Ahl from Soledad  (2015), Uma's River Song of Love from Uma  (2000), and Messiaen's O Sacrum Convivium from Curandera  (2003).

 

Title: The Heart Sutra
Artists: Susan Alcorn Arranged By Janel Leppin
Label: Ideologic Organ
Catalog #: SOMA038
Country: France
Release Date: May, 2020
Media: digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

At the time of writing, The Heart Sutra is a digital only release from Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ label. Usually, Ideologic Organ releases vinyl, so here's hoping that an lp will eventually appear. In any case, this release present nine Alcorn compositions, collected from five previous solo releases (Uma, 2000; Curandera, 2003; And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar, 2007; Touch this Moment, 2010; and Soledad, 2015). Janel Leppin was asked by Susan Alcorn to arrange her music. This recording is taken from a concert on May 31, 2012 at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn during Alcorn's residency. The music is performed by Anthony Pirog on guitar, Janel Leppin on cello, Jessika Kenney on vocals, Eyvind Kang on viola, Skúli Sverrisson on bass and Doug Wieselman on clarinets.

This recording is an anomaly among the others listed on this page, as it is it the only one that does not feature Susan Alcorn playing pedal steel guitar. With neither the characteristic sound of the pedal steel guitar nor Alcorn's unique playing of the instrument, the album may not satisfy the listener looking for those attributes. Nevertheless, it provides an interesting insight in Alcorn's compositions.

 

Title: Touch this Moment
Artist: Susan Alcorn
Label: Susan Alcorn Self-Released
Catalog #: N.A.
Country: United States
Digital Reissue Date: 2020
Original Release Date: 2010
Media: digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

Over the past twenty years, Susan Alcorn has released music in cdr or later cd format on the self-label, Uma Sounds. Some of these releases were subsequently issued in limited quantities by other labels but some of the music never saw broader distribution and much is long out of print and unavailable. For folks who began to follow the music of Susan Alcorn in more recent years, chasing down these early recordings has been difficult (or impossible) since in some cases copies haven't come up for sale on any of the various sites for used music in years.

The frustration with the arrangements in The Heart Sutra by Janel Leppin was that the desire to compare the arrangements with the initial music was stymied by the unavailability of the originals. However, upon the release of The Heart Sutra, we searched again for Touch this Moment and discovered much to our joy that four early Alcorn albums have been digitally reissued on Bandcamp! Presumably, these reissues appeared in 2020. These albums include Uma, 2000; Curandera, 2003; And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar, 2007; and Touch this Moment, 2010. Notably absent is the Sur cdr from 2002. Hopefully this omission will be redressed soon.

Touch this Moment represents a kind of rare recording in which an active listener experiences the pleasure of hearing an instrument played in a way that no one else ever thought to present it. To be sure, it is not every day that such an opportunity comes along.

 

Title: And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar
Artist: Susan Alcorn
Label: Susan Alcorn Self-Released
Catalog #: N.A.
Country: United States
Digital Reissue Date: 2020
Original Release Date: 2006
Media: digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar, originally released in 2006, is a favorite record by Susan Alcorn among the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House. The first track is titled The Heart Sutra. Who doesn't love The Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom? The PPPH staff published our own interpretation of it in the summer of 2003 in both written and narrated formats.

However, the jewel of this album is the title track, And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar, a sixteen-minute tour de force. If you were to hear only one Alcorn record, you would not go wrong choosing this one. The digital reissue concludes with Alcorn's rendition of Domenico Modugno's "Nel blu dipinto di blu" (aka "Volare"), which is a cheerful delight.

As a bonus, the Bandcamp page includes insightful liner notes for most tracks.

 

Title: Curandera
Artist: Susan Alcorn
Label: Susan Alcorn Self-Released
Catalog #: N.A.
Country: United States
Digital Reissue Date: 2020
Original Release Date: 2003
Media: digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

Curandera originally issued in 2003 contains several Alcorn originals along with O Sacrum Convivium of Olivier Messiaen and People Get Ready written by Curtis Mayfield and performed by The Impressions in 1965. If you never perceived the pedal steel guitar as an R&B instrument, this track will open your eyes to the amazing possibilities.

 

Title: Uma
Artist: Susan Alcorn
Label: Susan Alcorn Self-Released
Catalog #: N.A.
Country: United States
Digital Reissue Date: 2020
Original Release Date: 2000
Media: digital download
discogs.com: link
bandcamp.com: link

According to the discography on the official Susan Alcorn site, Uma is one of Alcorn's earliest releases. As the liner notes on the Bandcamp page state, "This CD is a picture, for what it's worth, of where I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually, at a certain point of time and in a certain space in August of 1999."

The first track is titled Uma's River Song of Love. If one thinks of the release as providing the ability to travel backward in time two decades, one might suppose that they could hear Alcorn at an earlier stage in her approach to her chosen instrument. In fact, it's not immediately apparent that this is the case. The texture and style of the playing of the pedal steel guitar is already established. We were reminded conceptually of the British guitarist Derek Bailey (January 29, 1930 - December 25, 2005), whose music we admire dearly. One can listen to Bailey's non-idiomatic improvisation from the early 1970's until his death and not discern a clear progression in the development of his musical sensibilities. He found his voice and he sang with it, adapting it in nuanced ways to the partners with whom he played over the decades. We suppose that the same can be said of Alcorn and her accommodation of her musical collaborators through-out the years. We don't want to suggest that the Alcorn's (or Bailey's) esthetics leapt from the proverbial musical womb fully formed. We accept that both were studio or concert musicians working within an idiom prior to moving into the domain of non-idiomatic improvisation. Bailey strongly discouraged listeners from seeking out old recordings where he played "straight". We have taken his admonition to heart and we have not sought such recordings out for him nor others, including Alcorn. As such, in Uma, we hear a timeless voice, one that already emerged from formative experiences into a mature and masterful artist.

And, by the way, her version of Amazing Grace on this recording makes you hear the Christian hymn, published in 1779, with words written in 1772 by English poet and Anglican clergyman John Newton (1725-1807), in a new way.

 

 

 

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