THOMAS KÖNER
Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost
TYPE072
Type Recordings 2010
25 Tracks. 125mins54secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD Boomkat: CD | DLD
iTunes: Nunatak: DLD Teimo: DLD Permafrost: DLD

A few months ago, Type began releasing entirely remastered vinyl editions of Thomas Köner’s long unavailable seminal three first albums, Nunatak (1990), Teimo (1992) and Permafrost (1993), all originally published on the now defunct Dutch imprint Barooni. All three have now been collected on a rather sumptuous triple CD set. This faultless triptych firmly established German-born Köner as one of the masters of dark ambient. He went on to release a number of albums for Mille Plateaux, Die Stadt and more recently Fario, and has, over the years, been commissioned a number of installations in various venues around the world, each new project allowing to explore the vast scope of his chosen field.

The sonic world created by Köner is one of glacial beauty, where deep undercurrents almost imperceptibly erode the dense sound formations which form the core of these records, relentlessly grinding down every particle of sound and noise until only the bare minimal is left. Working solely with recordings or gongs, which were carefully captured in a number of different rooms and in various conditions, including underwater, and processed into dense soundscapes, some retaining part of the original texture and grain of the sound, others distorted, stretched and twisted beyond recognition, dipped in thick layers of reverb. Stripped of any common musical reference, yet displaying incredibly rich tones and textures, Köner’s pieces are deeply haunting and hypnotic. Sounding in turn like greatly amplified ice movements, echoes of grinding machinery or what could be the sound of deep space, Köner’s work is ultimately totally alien. While often described as drone, the soundscapes are much too rich and intricate to adequately fit in that category. What Köner makes of his sound sources here is utterly mind-blowing. Far from being linear, his compositions, although at first sounding very similar, a feeling reinforced by the deliberately muffled sounds and noises used, are in fact for the most part extremely complex and intricate structures, which continuously evolve and change over the course of a piece and beyond. Köner appears to work at micro and macroscopic levels simultaneously, processing together components that are barely discernable and others that fill the available space almost entirely.

While they are undeniably linked and share common frozen grounds, each of these three records has its own individual voice. While Nunatak documents somewhat vast atmospheric settings, evocative of vast arctic landscapes, Teimo appears in comparison more ambitious, especially as Köner builds his soundscapes into what feels like orchestral motifs. Andenes is quite minimal, but tracks such as Ilira, Teimo, Neive Pehitentes 3 or Ruska are fuelled by much warmer currents, some ephemeral, others much more lasting. Permafrost is in contrast a meditative journey which takes the introspective nature of its predecessors to a new level, returning to some extend to the bare concept of Nunatak, but stripping it down even more, until only the deepest, darkest sound forms remain. This is particularly the case on pieces such as Serac, Firn or Permafrost, which appear caught up in a dense nocturnal blizzard, but the rest of the record is never far from these desolate terrains.

So dense and intricate are Köner’s compositions that it is difficult to isolate any particular moment of an album or even a sequence in a particular track. He focuses on the overall aspect of his work rather than use tricks or gimmicks to achieve a specific mood. This contributes to give his work a truly consistent atmospheric context which remains extremely rare, even in ambient records. The influence of his work and of his approach can be felt in the records of Biosphere, Geir Jenssen being perhaps Köner’s closest contemporary, but it can also be felt in many of the Miasmah outputs for instance, and to a lesser extend in the work of the likes of Machinefabriek, Lawrence English or BJ Nilsen. Köner remains however in a league of his own, and these re-editions are welcome reminders of his utterly visionary work.

5/5

Thomas Köner | Thomas Köner (MySpace) | Type Recordings
Amazon UK: CD US: CD Boomkat: CD | DLD
iTunes: Nunatak: DLD Teimo: DLD Permafrost: DLD