Open Secret

Reissued in 2009, Open Secret was Asher Quinn's debut album in 1987, a startling introduction for a player destined to become one of the masters of his genre. Eight instrumentals long in its original form, a deeply evocative landscape of lilting acoustics shot through with Quinn's oftentimes forceful piano playing, this is the album's second reappearance in just four years. A 2005 reissue added two bonus tracks, including the nearly ten-minute "Little Wolf" and a strangely effective vocal version of the closing "Open Secret"; 2009 saw the addition of three further cuts, "The Power of Love," "Song of the Morning," and "Shine Brightly." All three were recorded in 1986, around the same time as the main LP was coming together, and feature the same core of musicians — the best known of whom is multi-instrumentalist Anthony Phillips. With all this going on, it stands to reason that Quinn fans should not allow the 2009 Open Secret to pass them by; newcomers, however, alerted by exposure to any of the multitude of other albums and appearances Quinn has made over the years, should also delve in. True, at this early stage in his career, it was easy to draw comparisons with Phillips' own career, and lazy ears might also hit on some of Mike Oldfield's more pastoral moments as well. But the sound and vision are Quinn's alone, a sparkling leaping-off point for what has become one of the most esoteric, yet at the same time reassuringly familiar, catalogs of the past two decades.