Blues Alif Lam Mim In the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis is a new composition from Catherine Christer Hennix's expanded Just Intonation ensemble, the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage. This expanded ensemble includes vocalists Imam Ahmet Muhsin Tüzer, Amir Elsaffan and Amirtha Kidambi, an expanded brass section with the addition of Paul Schwingesnschlögl and Elena Kakaliagou as well as the addition of Marcus Pal and Stefan Tiedje on electronics.
Packaged in a lavish, oversized letterpressed jacket by Stumptown.
"...Hennix has created a sound that reliably taps into our subconscious and frees us from linear time...." ~ The Quietus
Catherine Christer Hennix (1948, Stockholm) is an artist, poet, composer and philosopher with a strong interest in logic and formal music theory. She was among the pioneers in Sweden experimenting with main-frame computer generated composite sound wave forms in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s she was a key protagonist in the Downtown School along with La Monte Young and Henry Flynt, with whom she has collaborated on numerous occasions. She pursued studies with raga master Pandit Pran Nath and led the Just Intonation live-electronic ensembles Hilbert Hotel and The Deontic Miracle, the recordings of the latter are presently being released by Important Records. She was a professor of mathematics and computer science, and assistant to and co-author with A.S. Esenin-Volpin for which she was given the Centenary Prize Fellow Award by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. Hennix's interest in drone music and the meditative, trance-like state it induces is apparent in her exploration of similar music in many other cultures and traditions, drawing inspiration from the Japanese Gagaku music and the early, vocal, thirteenth-century music of Perotinus and Leoninus, for example.
In 2003 she returned to computer generated composite sound wave forms now called Soliton(e)s of which Soliton(e) Star was the first result. Subsequently she formed the Just Intonation ensemble The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage which performs Blues Dhikir al- Salam (Live at the Grimmuseum, vol. 1, Berlin, 2011, Important Records 2012). In 2012 Henry Flynt asked Hennix for a new, expanded realization of ISE for an installation at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, to be featured in his retrospective/ prospective show Henry Flynt Activities 1959 – at ZKM. In response Hennix realized a 4-channel composition, Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis, her first 4-channel computer assisted composition since 1969.