First Impressions 044: The Strength of Strings.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

Patience seemed to be the central force for Susan Alcorn. Susan passed away in January unexpectedly, and no cause of death has yet been recorded.

Her music always appeared unreal to me—not in the sense of "awesome," but in a more profound way. Here was an artist using an instrument traditionally associated with music given the emblematic status of being pure, authentic, and real. The pedal steel is a signature sound of country music, yet Susan made a path for it that tradition could not contain. She never severed ties with tradition but leapt forward with the pedal in working from a point of cultural dissonance where her compositions and playing sat somewhere between the fantastical and the humblingly tangible.:

“I learned that music is more than just the fundamental of a note – like the core of a planet, galaxy, or atom, each is surrounded by an atmosphere and a stratosphere, with energy and matter reaching to infinity.”

Susan was always generous in citing her influences - folk music, baroque, classic country, blues, rock, early 60s girl groups and doo-wop, psychedelic music, the American Songbook, John Coltrane's spiritual journey through his music, Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, Pauline Oliveros, and 20th-century classical composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, György Ligeti, Shostakovich, Britten, and Philip Glass. It's possibly the nature of an expanding industry and its ongoing marginalisation of experimental music that Susan never got held in the same standing.

I first began talking to Susan about creating a piece for Longform Editions in 2020, though I had certainly thought of her much earlier. I wanted to ensure we were offering a platform worthy of her work. Susan had never heard of Longform Editions but was curious and engaged with the idea. Her responses were quick, and, crucially, she never said no. So, I checked in a few times over the years. She mentioned she was waiting for the right time, but the truth was she was waiting for the right headspace. Given the extraordinary breadth of Susan’s work across so many settings, I never imagined that an extended, improvised solo piece for pedal steel - my suggestion - would be an unforeseen twist in her trajectory. She had, of course, played and recorded unaccompanied many times, but possibly never unanchored.

Susan’s gift was to take a single inspiration or guiding light and allow it to contain multitudes as she channelled it through her pedal steel. For a longer piece, she wanted more freedom but couldn't articulate what that might look like. But then, that was the point she had to arrive at: she simply couldn’t. She confided that she was glad I stayed persistent."Truth is," she said, "I lacked confidence until I thought, ‘fuck this, I’ll just play’.”

I love the thrill of the resulting piece, In-Yu. It's Susan, but on a tightrope of her own making. The energy is equal parts chance and verve, grounded by decades of patience. It’s also singularly beautiful. I truly hope this is not the last recording we hear from her.

Andrew
-
OK, let’s go:

Lust (1) - Voice Actor, Squu:

Sheffield-based Noa Kurzweil, now a party-of-one as Voice Actor, teams up with Welsh producer squu, a regular on her NTS show. Kurzweil channels the submersion of self in the online discourse, in a way Nico may have done if she had made it into the digital era, both doe-eyed and deadpan in delivery. Against squu’s cut-up club pulses and dank-realm dream-pop stylings, Kurzweil overlaps dislocation and anonymity with an odd sensuality that consumes any lyrical sense. This is perhaps where the title comes in (which also resembles a file name)—lust as both intimate and anonymous, and possibly at the heart of modern darkness.

Journey in Satchidananda / Live at The Store - ragenap+dathon: At first listen, this semi-regular duo’s 41-minute improvisation, inspired by Alice Coltrane’s famous piece, resonates more with the meditative rumble of Dylan Carlson’s Earth than with Coltrane’s harmonic thrum. Upon further exploration, I discovered the conceptual quirk of this performance, played out through six-string basses: the pair decided to approach the Coltrane work in the same way Shane Parish approached his solo acoustic take, then blew out the Venn diagram by dovetailing into the open-ended jam stance of The Grateful Dead’s Dark Star. That’s some serious lopin’ along through the American music cosmos. While Joel Berk (ragenap) messaged me, suggesting it might be 'arguably blasphemous,' the peculiarity of the pair’s chosen warp and weft yields a fireball of drone minimalism that echoes Coltrane’s departure from form, channeling the coiled points within the far-out, free, and infinitely elevated realm of sound.

Lucid Dreams – Chihei Hatakeyama: Hatakeyama has always been expert in cradling drift, and over and over, he uncovers something deeply elemental well past the surface glaze and haze of much ambient. On Lucid Dreams, he pursues something even more elusive—the space between sleep and wakefulness. On Dance of the Tides, the vocal tones of Cucina Povera’s Maria Rossi take on a choral quality, their slow-motion resonance pulling you into a space both intimate and intangible. Hearing this, I wonder if Hatakeyama experiences this liminal space as a tone, at least figuratively, to send him into such work of stately expanse.

Sirens – Charles Sundborn: A short EP from this Naarm composer that lingers well past its runtime. Sundborn layered saxophone lines into the mic of his laptop, using the limitations of the technology to give his playing over to an element of chance in how it was captured. It’s soft, breathy, and lyrical but also leaning into more epic voids without upending their delicate state. It’s a poise that reminds me of Ingram Marshall’s wondrous Fog Tropes, and though Sirens has more of a felt-fuzz feeling than the solemn weight of Marshall’s work, there’s enough here to suggest Sundborn could go deeper in.

Psychic Geography – Dovs: The pair of Vienna’s Johannes Auvinen (Tin Man) and Mexico City’s Gabo Barranco (AAAA) have previously traded in wiggly electro but drop the percolating pace here for a set of cool and resonant synth works without so much as a click. Closer in feel to the languorous side of the sadly departed Norm Chambers’ Panabrite project - a hallmark of underground vintage analogue synth exploration - Dovs cast their spell slowly, perhaps energised only in pursuit of a peaceful plane without planning out. The pair’s DNA in dancefloor moves lingers in these cool movements of interlocking textures, in how they spring and vibrate, echoing like the resonant chime of a large old clock.

Germinations - Sun Swept: With titles like Remember the Cosmos and Threads of Air, you know where Colorado artist Sarah Christiansen wants her music to radiate. Layering loops of flute and tenor recorder across delicately anchoring synths, the pieces on Germinations feel like the subtle echoes you hear at the top of a mountain that are carried by the wind. The vaporous nature of Christiansen’s playing and treatments is soft and elusive, seemingly borne by the grace of giving in to nature’s infinite unknown.

We also released Longform Editions 42 yesterday - the final edition:

Thanks for reading, and for your support.
-
Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.