The truly astounding, sixth entry in Blank Forms’ ongoing series of previously unreleased music by the Swedish composer, musician, poet, philosopher, mathematician and visual artist, Catherine Christer Hennix, ‘Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord’ presents a never before released recording of one of the composer’s most important and groundbreaking efforts. Sprawling to just shy of 47 minutes of rippling, mind-altering synthesiser tones, augmented by the sheng, this towering and hugely important LP release constitutes the most comprehensive original recording of this foundational work to date, not to mention one of the most engaging and important records we’ve encountered this year.

When it comes to supporting the historical and contemporary contexts of experimental music, the New York based curatorial platform, publisher, and record label, Blank Forms, is doing a saint’s work. Almost entirely unique in the landscape of experimental art and sound, they’ve brought forth a vast range of material at a startling pace - archival and contemporary texts and music - as well as presenting concerts, exhibitions, and talks. Central to the initiative’s output is their label, which, since launching in 2017, has delivered groundbreaking releases by Charlemagne Palestine, Don Cherry, Maryanne Amacher, Judith Hamann, Atrás Del Cosmos, The Shadow Ring, James Rushford, Jerry Hunt, Takehisa Kosugi, Akio Suzuki, and numerous others, each contributing to a process of bridge building between various idioms of experimental practice, across their historical and contemporary realisations. Running like a vein through Blank Forms’ output is a deep dedication to the work of Catherine Christer Hennix. Over the last six years, they’ve taken unprecedented steps in making this seminal composer’s work available to a wide listening public, so far issuing ‘Selected Early Keyboard Works’ (2018), ‘The Deontic Miracle: Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku’ (2019), ‘Unbegrenzt’ (2020), ‘Blues Alif Lam Mim’ (2021), and ‘Solo For Tamburium’ (2023). Now they’re back with yet another incredible deep dive into the output of the legendary Swedish composer, musician, poet, philosopher, mathematician and visual artist, with ‘Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord’, a never before released recording of her early magnum opus, originally titled ‘The Well Tuned Organ’ when it debuted in 1976, and later retitled ‘The Electric Harpsichord’. Absolutely engrossing and hypnotic it’s quite possibly the most exciting archival work of Hennix’s to appear to date.

Catherine Christer Hennix is a legend within the field of experimental music who emerged into the global consciousness during the late 1960s and early 70s. She began her creative career playing drums, before going to work at Stockholm’s pioneering Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), where she helped develop early synthesizer and tape music. In 1968, she traveled to New York where she met Fluxus artists Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles and developed fruitful collaborative relationships with numerous luminaries associated with the movement, notably Henry Flynt and La Monte Young, the latter of whom would introduce her to her teacher Pandit Pran Nath. Despite the fact that Hennix has worked steadily across the last half-century, remaining highly regarded over the breadth of that time, until the last ten or so years her recorded output has remained largely unreleased, making Blank Forms’ standing dedication to her work, that much more important, as it has allowed us to fully grasp how significant her contribution has been.

‘The Electric Harpsichord’ is among Hennix’s earliest known and documented works. It is also, importantly, the piece, via Die Schachtel’s 2010 CD release of the recording documenting its 1976 debut at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, that began the process of returning the composer to her rightful audience. Over the years prior to that release, the majority of which Hennix remained fairly out of view within the experimental music community, it had already developed a legendary reputation, rooted in a twenty-six minute fragment salvaged and circulated by the composer’s friend, Henry Flynt, who hailed its importance on multiple occasions - considering it a milestone in musical Minimalism, as well as spawning a new genre that he dubbed “hallucinogenic/ecstatic sound environments” (HESE) - including airing it on WBAI radio, organizing tape concerts at New York alternative arts spaces during the 1970s, and later penning the 1998 essay which served as the liner notes for Die Schachtel’s 2010 CD release of the work.

Rediscovered and compiled for release shortly before her death in November 2023, ‘Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord’ presents a never-before-heard recording of ‘The Electric Harpsichord’. Drawing upon Hennix’s studies of Hindustani classical music with Pandit Pran Nath, the piece is composed in just intonation - attempting to draw out the transcendental potentiality of precise tuning - the piece comprises bursts of oscillating, synthetic tones, generated by retuned synthesizer and a tape-based system for feedback delay, as well as additional sustained tones generated by the Chinese reed instrument, the sheng, most likely played by her Deontic Miracle bandmate Hans Isgren.

Once encountered for more than a handful of moments, Henry Flynt’s designation of ‘The Electric Harpsichord’ as a “hallucinogenic/ecstatic sound environments” feels particularly apt and insightful. Across the piece’s roughly 47 minute duration, the work emerges as a mind-bending alternate iteration of high-minimalist sensibilities as rippling arpeggiations of synthetic tones play in shimmering patterns and transform into a tapestry of drone that twinkles, swirls, and bends time, space, and perception before the ear. Completely immersive and hypnotic, with each subtle transformation challenging expectation and anticipation, it’s easily one of the most singular and unique works of Western experimental music to draw upon the teachings of Indian Classical music, while entirely leaving a tangible sense of the reference behind.

The mutant cousin of Charlemagne Palestine’s strumming music and La Monte Young’s ‘Well Tuned Piano’, even for those well versed in the previously available recordings of Hennix’s ‘The Electric Harpsichord’, these newly discovered and never before issued recordings of the work, Blank Forms’ release of ‘Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord’ will render inevitable revelations and feel like approaching the work for the very first time.