CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX Selected Early Keyboard Works 2xLP/1976/La Monte Young

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CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX 'Selected Early Keyboard Works' Double LP (US, Blank Forms Editions/Empty Editions, Catalogue #BF-002/EE005) Brand new/unplayed copy of limited year 2018 Blank Form Editions/Empty Editions label Double LP vinyl edition of "selected early keyboard works" (minimal electronic keyboard), recorded in 1976, by Catherine Christer Hennix.

(NOTE: LIMITED VINYL EDITION!)

Selected Early Keyboard Works is the first in a series of planned archival records of the unheard music of Swedish composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist Catherine Christer Hennix, co-released by Blank Forms Editions and Empty Editions. It comes hot-on-the-heels of Traversée Du Fantasme at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, Hennix's first solo museum exhibition in over 40 years, and coincides with both Blank Forms' publication of Poësy Matters and Other Matters, a two-volume collection of her writing, and the closing of Thresholds of Perception, a retrospective archival show of Hennix's visual work at The Empty Gallery in Hong Kong. The record also marks the first time Hennix's own music has been given a full-length vinyl issue. In 1976, Catherine Christer Hennix's just intonation live-electronic ensemble The Deontic Miracle performed Hennix's original compositions, alongside works by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Terry Jennings, as part of Brouwer's Lattice at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Culled from rehearsal tapes recorded during the ten-day Dream Music Festival, Selected Early Keyboard Works features three pieces of minimal music, performed by Hennix on tunable electric keyboards. "Mode Nouvelle Des Modalités", for well-tuned just intonation Fender Rhodes and sine wave drone, is a consummate expression of Hennix's formative years, a probing meditation giving the mercurial quality of early electronic music an instrumental life replete with the dexterity of Cecil Taylor and shades of Paul Bley's synthesized reveries. "Equal Temperament Fender Mix", performed on the same Rhodes but in twelve-tone equal temperament tuning, employs a tape delay system not unlike that used famously by Terry Riley, here towards more somber, hallucinatory means. Hennix is joined by Hans Isgren for the collection's centerpiece, "The Well-Tuned Marimba", for well-tuned Yamaha, sheng, sine wave, and live electronics. Using the same approach and just intonation keyboard featured on Hennix's The Electric Harpsichord (2010), but with marimba in place of harpsichord stops, the piece is an undulating marvel of lysergic drone, equally deserving of its companion's status as "THE obscure masterpiece of the days of the early American minimalism". Now accessible for the first time, these recordings only begin to fill gaps of silence from a figure whose work has until recently remained flickering at the margins of some of the most enduring cultural developments of the 20th century. Tape transfer and master cut by Andreas (Lupo) Lubich. Audio restoration and mastering by Stephan Mathieu.

Ten years ago, followers of drone, experimental electronic music, and minimalism might have noticed that something was amiss with the canon: Most of the big names there were men, with very few women or people of color represented. But recent reissues have sought to present a broader portrait of late-20th-century minimalism, one that ventures beyond La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and others of their ilk. From a long overdue reappraisal of the gay black composer Julius Eastman to crucial overviews of Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, and Mary Jane Leach, such reissues have presented a far more diverse set of artists plotting new courses amid the sine waves.

Swedish polymath Catherine Christer Hennix is a composer, philosopher, writer, mathematician, and visual artist who has benefited from such a reassessment. Despite the fact that she has been working since the late 1960s and mingled with Young and Riley, it wasn’t until 2010 that a recorded version of her bewildering 1976 drone work “The Electric Harpsichord” was finally made available. This year alone saw her first solo museum exhibition in over 40 years, Traversée du Fantasme, at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam; a retrospective archival show of her visual work at the Empty Gallery in Hong Kong; as well as two volumes of her writing, capped now by this two-disc set of previously unheard pieces drawn from rehearsal tapes made during the 10-day Dream Music Festival in 1976.

Exploring different corners of Hennix’s soundworld, Selected Early Keyboard Works shows that she wasn’t always just exploring fathoms-deep drones. Far removed from the scale of her just-intonation ensemble, the Deontic Miracle, these works document her work with a Fender Rhodes and sine-wave drone. The first half of the set presents 43 minutes of a piece entitled “Mode nouvelle des modalite?s” and it finds Hennix far from the world of her friend, colleague, and sometime collaborator La Monte Young and more taken with the quicksilver early electronics of Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the hands of most players of that era (think Lonnie Liston Smith, Herbie Hancock, or Stevie Wonder the Fender Rhodes created floating, placid tones, but Hennix quickly breaks them into shards and jags, rupturing the mood often to propel herself into strange new realms. On the second half of the composition, more space appears between Hennix’s gestures so that the sounds seem to float like space debris in zero gravity.

The 13-minute “Equal Temperament Fender Mix” is charming, worthy of comparison to the early electronic keyboard works of Terry Riley, right down to Hennix deploying her own tape-delay system to create multiple layers of bubbling sound. This should come as no surprise: The Swedish were some of the earliest audiences to embrace Riley’s revolutionary approach to improv and composition.

The sparkling and unnerving 18-minute highlight “The Well-Tuned Marimba” is closely related to Hennix’s drone piece from that same year, “The Electric Harpsichord,” and might be the more intriguing composition, folding together Hennix’s Yamaha keyboard, sine-wave generator, and the sheng, a traditional Chinese polyphonic reed instrument, whose wheezing overtones add a preternatural buzz to the skin-prickling electronic layers. While some of the most revered minimalist composers and compositions present a calm exterior, these newly discovered efforts of Hennix show us a disquieting—and welcome—new wrinkle to those serene surfaces. - Andy Beta/Pitchfork

- Selected Early Keyboard Works is the first in a series of planned archival records of the unheard music of Swedish composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist Catherine Christer Hennix.
- Co-released by Blank Forms Editions and Empty Editions.
- Culled from rehearsal tapes recorded during the ten-day Dream Music Festival, Selected Early Keyboard Works features three pieces of minimal music, performed by Hennix on tunable electric keyboards.
- Hans Isgren is featured on the collection's centerpiece, "The Well-Tuned Marimba", a piece for well-tuned Yamaha, sheng, sine wave, and live electronics.
- Tape transfer and master cut by Andreas (Lupo) Lubich.
- Audio restoration and mastering by Stephan Mathieu.

Tracks on this Double LP are as follows:

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