SUSAN ALCORN

In-Yu

Genre: JAZZ / FUSION

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Boomkat Product Review:

Pedal steel virtuoso Susan Alcorn lands on Longform Editions with a celestial half-hour improvisation that runs the gamut of her fascinations, melting from eerie, windswept Americana and sacred minimalism into doomy drone and harmolodic chaos.

Alcorn assures us that she cleared her mind completely for this one - there was nothing planned, particularly, except the performance itself. She's got little to prove at this point, not only is she one of the world's most exceptional pedal steel players, but she's worked tirelessly to expand the instrument's reach, devising countless exploratory solo plates and collaborating with artists like Pauline Oliveros, Ken Vandermark, Leila Bourdreuil and Joe McPhee. On 'In-Yu', she sounds as if she's been unplugged from the timeline; Alcorn admits that the inspiration of Coltrane, folk music, country, 20th century composition, Oliveros and psychedelic music is always somewhere in the background, but the way she repurposes her influences is jaw-droppingly unique.

There's a patience to the piece that's truly rare; playing unaccompanied, Alcorn introduces us to the pedal steel by testing its boundaries, teasing familiar pitchy wails at first beneath crystal-clear plucks, then losing the anchor and hitting dense flurries of distorted notes. This interplay characterizes the piece's first half, a back-and-forth between serenity and disorder that Alcorn eventually numbs for a while during the elegiac central section. Here she leans into jazz, effortlessly picking out short, impressive runs that she sandwiches between mysterious drones; every so often, there's a trace of the Americana she cut her teeth playing, but it's cut short before it can take root completely, disintegrated by dissonance or meditational ambience. And in the final act, Alcorn braves the storm again, hammering her strings and creating lopsided rhythms that resonate with metallic menace.

MP3 Release (1)