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Catherine Christer Hennix, “Selected Early Keyboard Works” (Blank Forms/Empty Editions, 2018)

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It is quite rare for me to be interested in anyone’s archival rehearsal tapes, but Catherine Christer Hennix’s oft-fascinating career has been woefully under-documented until only recently. In fact, this is arguably her formal vinyl debut, a milestone that improbably took more than four decades to reach. These recordings date back from 1976, when her ensemble The Deontic Miracle was performing at the Dream Music Festival in Sweden, but the album mostly features Hennix by herself playing a keyboard tuned to just-intonation. Given that these three pieces were never intended for release, it is no surprise that there is occasionally a meandering, improvisatory feel, but a few of them blossom into a wonderfully hallucinatory swirl of uneasily harmonizing overtones. Selected Early Keyboard Works is a bit more than a fine collection of unreleased material though, as it highlights a more unpolished and intimate side of Hennix’s vision than her other releases. More importantly, it features one of the greatest pieces ever recorded by the La Monte Young/Pandit Pran Nath milieu.

The decision to open this album with “Nouvelle mode des modalités” was a curious one, as there is absolutely nothing about it that would make me think that it was a Catherine Christer Hennix piece. Instead, it just feels like a lot of mid-20th century experimental and avant-garde music: a stop-start splatter of discordant, chromatic note clusters that was primarily interesting at the time because it was rejecting conventional Western modality. More accurately, it sounds like an extended electric piano solo decontextualized from a Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis live performance: throw in a weirdly lurching funk groove and some chords and it would probably be fairly enjoyably, but it just feels kind of indulgent and directionless on its own.

That triggered an immediate and incorrect conclusion from me that these tapes were unrepresentative juvenalia recorded before Hennix had developed a distinctive voice (beyond a general yet deep passion for just-intonation and Eastern-influenced minimalism, at least). That conclusion initially made plenty of sense, as The Deontic Miracle were still performing pieces by La Monte Young and Terry Riley along with Hennix’s own compositions at the time. However, Hennix’s stellar Central Palace Music dates from the exact same period and even the second part of “Noevelle” sounds recognizably and wonderfully Hennix-ian. The difference between “Nouvelle mode des modalités II” and its predecessor is a surprisingly simple one, however, as Hennix merely switched from staccato clusters of notes to rippling flurries and added a sine-wave drone. In doing so, she shifted the emphasis of the piece from melody to harmony, something just-intonation is infinitely better suited for, as Hennix coaxes a wonderfully vibrant, shimmering, and otherworldly fantasia out of her Fender Rhodes.

The following “The Well-Tuned Marimba” is even better still, as the eerie drones of Hans Isgren’s sheng weave darkly dissonant harmonies with Hennix’s gently churning and glimmering web of strange arpeggios. It is easily one of the finest pieces that Hennix has ever recorded, filling the room like a murky and vaguely menacing supernatural cloud. While it only lasts for about 18 minutes, it feels like a veil has been pulled away to offer a brief glimpse of some kind of infinite, extradimensional void of cosmic horror lurking just behind the precarious façade of our reality. It is quite a glorious illusion, feeling far more like a living and hallucinatory nightmare world than a mere composition. Sometimes I forget that Hennix’s work is absolutely the most visceral and disturbing of all the Pandit Pran Nath-inspired minimalists. “The Well-Tuned Marimba” is a good reminder that her drone work is just one facet of a vision that can also descend into some rather dark and deliciously uncomfortable territory.

The album’s final piece “Equal Temperament Fender Mix” is also quite unique, if a bit less audacious. As the title indicates, Hennix changed her tuning to 12-tone equal temperament, but the subtle harmonic difference between one unusual tuning and another is more or less lost on me. To my ears, it is far more significant that she added tape-delay to her arsenal, a tool that she wields brilliantly. It sounds a lot like reverb-swathed lo-fi recording of a broken music box struggling to play a classical piano sonata, but quickly losing the thread as overlapping delays transform the piece into a bleary pile-up of stuttering and plinking melodic fragments.

Apparently, this double album is merely the first installment of a planned series of archival Hennix releases. If this is what Blank Forms was able to unearth from just early rehearsal tapes, it bodes quite well for the rest of the series. As whole, Selected Early Keyboard Works is a strong collection that illuminates an early and formative phase in Hennix’s development into a formidable and truly unique composer. As a somewhat devout fan, it was a delight for me to hear an album so radically different from her other releases, as well as was quite a pleasant surprise to discover that it was still legitimately excellent (if a bit raw). The bigger surprise, however, was that this is not an album strictly for the fans, as “The Well-Tuned Marimba” is an absolute stunner. In fact, I hereby declare it to be one of the true masterpieces of 20th century minimalism.That alone makes Selected Early Keyboard Works a significant and revelatory work. The rest of the album is just icing on the cake.

Listen here.

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Eli Keszler, “Last Signs of Speed” (Empty Editions, 2016)

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Eli Keszler’s Cold Pin was easily one of most remarkable and inventive albums of 2011, but he has largely been working under my radar ever since, steadily releasing a flow of live recordings and small-edition vinyl-only collaborations. Consequently, I was delighted to discover that he was finally ready to unleash another solo opus. Last Signs of Speed, the inaugural release from Berlin’s Empty Editions, is inherently a bit less radical than Cold Pin, as it is sadly not built from a motorized string installation. 

That said, it may as well have been built from a motorized percussion installation instead, as Keszler’s hyper-kinetic free-jazz-inspired drumming is compellingly inhuman and unpredictable. There is also some music: the album description intriguingly references both Scientist and Iannis Xenakis as key influences, but that dub influence is a damn subtle one. Instead, Last Signs generally sounds more like Xenakis mixed with a truckload of drumsticks being fitfully poured down a long and winding flight of stairs (in the best way possible).

I tend to think of Eli Keszler primarily as an incredibly talented percussionist with a lot of bold and interesting ideas, so I sometimes forget that he is a formidable composer and multi-instrumentalist as well. In fact, most of these twelve pieces were performed entirely by Keszler himself, which goes a long way towards explaining why it was recorded in three different cities over two years. Sometimes Keszler had some talented help though, as he is occasionally joined by cellist Leila Bordreuil, percussionist Geoff Mullen, and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. 

Unsurprisingly, the pieces featuring the string orchestra tend to be the most Xenakis-like and often the most vibrant, rich, and fully formed. That is not always the case though, as Keszler goes it alone in the wonderfully deranged opener “Sudden Laughter, Laughter Without Reason,” which sounds like a handful of sickly, out-of-phase sonar pings uncomfortably harmonizing with one another as Keszler unleashes a wildly skittering drum solo. It is a quite an impressive opening salvo. 

As for the orchestra, they make their strongest showing on “Is Stage Director,” as they work up quite a churning and cacophonous din of ugly drones as Keszler goes absolutely bananas on his kit. It is probably the strongest piece on the album just on sheer intensity alone, as Keszler is an unpredictable blur of oddly timed and insanely intricate fills. Curiously, that unhinged flurry is immediately followed by my other favorite piece (“Holes, Parts Missing”), which eschews percussive pyrotechnics altogether in favor of a quietly lurching and see-sawing rhythm of deep bowed strings.

The rest of the album is a bit more one-dimensionally percussion-focused, but there is indeed a bizarrely manifested and deeply abstract dub influence that arguably surfaces again and again in the form of woozily throbbing bass pulses. “No Iodine, No Breeze” is an especially representative example of that strain, resembling a crawling reggae groove that has been deconstructed into ghostly starkness with some eerily tinkling piano accompaniment. It is the sort of thing that would definitely drag in the wrong hands, but the wildly plinking and ricocheting percussion handily erases any danger of a lull. Also, aside from his “conventional” drumming, Keszler additionally creates a lot of unusual textural and rhythmic effects using rocks and gravel on his kit. It is quite a distinctive sound. 

Most of Last Signs of Speed is devoted to interesting variations upon similarly minimal melodic themes, such as “Breaches Breaches,” which sounds like someone tirelessly pumping away at a dying accordion. The more dramatic departures tend to occur only when other musicians are involved, such as Leila Bordreuil’s nuanced miasma of nightmarish cello drones in “The Next Day, In the Afternoon.” 

Not to be upstaged on his own album, Keszler’s percussion for that piece resembles nothing less than several overlapping and fast-paced ping-pong matches. Later, Keszler teams up with Geoff Mullen for an apparent reprise of “No Iodine, No Breeze” entitled “Willing to be Open,” which takes the album’s percussion to strange and frenzied new heights. Wielding an array of glass, metal, and wood fragments, it sounds like either the work of an insanely busy Rube Goldberg contraption or an amplified and bizarrely rhythmic hail storm.

Naturally, the problem with making an album as brilliant and inventive as Cold Pin is that there will inevitably have to be a follow-up and that it will be nearly impossible to make the same impact a second time, though Keszler did revisit Cold Pin‘s mechanized installation once more with 2012’s Catching Net. Last Signs of Speed is a different beast altogether though, veering away from installations and sound art into a kinetic tour de force performance behind the drum kit. As such, it is considerably more technique-driven than conceptually visionary, but Keszler’s technique is quite staggering on its own, as he is a skittering, clattering whirlwind. 

His talents as a composer are not quite on the same level though, so Speed probably would have been stronger as just a single LP rather than a double. The pieces are all generally quite good, but a few feel interchangeable with one another and a broodingly monochromatic mood has a tendency to make an album feel longer than it actually is. 

Minor grumbling aside, however, Last Signs of Speed is still quite a singular and inspired album. My opinion may be somewhat suspect though, as I love listening to great drummers flexing their improv skills and could probably happily listen to Keszler play for hours with no music at all. While I am sure that such a predisposition towards free-jazz drumming helps make Speed a bit more mesmerizing, it is probably not an essential prerequisite, as this is exactly the sort of album that could make someone excited about virtuosic percussionists.

Listen here.