This is the fifth solo offering by the Houston, Texas-based pedal steel sorceress, Susan Alcorn. "The Heart Sutra" opens and is inspired by the "Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Wisdom", which was delivered by Buddha 2,500 years ago. It is a beautiful, yet solemn work that reverbates from within as Susan strums those magical strings. The title track, "And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar", was inspired by Messiaen's "Et Expecto Ressurectionum Mortuorum". It is a near 16-minute epic of stirring, haunting sounds in which each note is suspended in space. Each notes is stretched out and floats like a spirit on the wind in a graveyard. Ms. Alcorn's approach to the pedal steel guitar is completely unique and she doesn't quite sound lie anyone else. If one is patient enough, they realize that she makes every note and space count.
      "The Glass is Already Broken" is another piece in which each melodic fragment is touching, somber and well-selected, yet it drifts into a more sinister area. "The First Turning of the Wheel" was inspired, oddly enough, by the late Bob Graettinger, composer & arranger for Stan Kenton's classic album, "This Modern World/City of Glass". I am not quite sure how this music is related to Kenton's modern big band work, but again I was moved by the solemn spaciousness.
       For "The Second Turning of the Wheel", the notes are again softly stretched out and immensely eerie. On "Three Minute Warning", Susan lets each sound swirl and be bathed in a haze or a ghost-like echo. Ms. Alcorn brings things to a close with a charming version of "Volare", complete with some finger-snaps. Corny? Not really since it works in the same way that Martin Denny's music also helps us to smile when times are too tough to be taken too seriously. - BLG

Downtown Music Gallery

Susan Alcorn is one of the few musicians to play the pedal steel guitar--normally associated with country music (and she is a huge country fan)--in improvised settings. Read her own bio here and make sure to open Susan Alcorn's myspace page so you can listen to her music while you read this.

Alcorn's first generally-available cd, Uma , was the only thing I could listen to while trying to fall asleep during a months-long "bout" of insomnia about five years ago. Her music became incredibly important to me. Even when she really dug into her instrument and pushed her sound into some scary places, I could always feel a warm, reassuring, human presence coming through to me. I listened in both heightened and near-vegetal states of consciousness, straining bug-eyed in the dark and falling through my body into sleep. "I'm here with you," the music said, "I'm beautiful and I'm terrifying and this is how it is." On the worst nights of the insomnia, I'd make it all the way to the end of Uma, to its only studio recording, a jaw-dropping arrangement of Amazing Grace , recorded by "overdubbing four steel guitars and one rhythm guitar." Listen to it here .

She wrote of the song: "I think if you listen closely to the song Amazing Grace , you can hear the entire history of American music. You can hear Mahalia Jackson, Doc Watson, Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, Lloyd Green and Pete Fountain -- I also hear Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane and Maybelle Carter; David Vest and Bill Monroe; Blind Willie McTell, Charles Ives, and Nina Simone; Laura Nyro and Roberta Flack -- a patchwork mosaic fed by strong earthen roots and deep spring waters."

Susan's first vinyl release -- And I Await the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar -- was released a month or two ago by the Brooklyn label " Olde English Spelling Bee " (their name for me conjures a spelling bee with kids drunk on malt liquor). It's limited to 750 copies. Get one now at Fusetron or wherever you can find
 it.

Will Schofield     Speldering the Glaur

Ms. Alcorn and the  record label Olde English Spelling Bee have given another gift, a lovely solo LP called And I Await (the Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar), so that 750 people with turntables will be able to summon this profound musical source for themselves, again and again and again. I'm really glad I'm one of 'em -- I mean, I can really USE this thing. Every time I put it on, it's an instant heavy meditation on human vs. void, song vs. silence, struck vs. unstruck, motion vs. stillness, calm vs. intense.... I could go on, but it doesn't seem right to use the idea of "versus" so much. This isn't combative music, but it is tough music, the way it stands up in the universe with its "single notes that vibrate like tiny, hopeful pin-points of light held deep in the darkest night." (In the eloquent words of Dave Keenan yet again.) The city sounds outside my window can easily drown out this music, but they do not 'win' -- next to it, the roaring engines and shouting citizens and tortuous car alarms sound even more inappropriate and futile than ever. Anyway, it's kinda weird to see an actual private press classic come out as a brand new album, but here it is, in a great gatefold sleeve that features hand-drawn wraparound cover art and, even better, hand-written liner notes that reference 2500-year-old Buddhist sutras, Oliver Messiaen, Stan Kenton, and more. None of which would be nearly as important if the music wasn't so good....

blastitude.com

THE WIRE   October 2007

AND I AWAIT THE RESURRECTION
OF THE
PEDAL STEEL GUITAR

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