Thomas Köner

In a field such as ambient drone, which is already brimming with mysterious producers and shadowy textures, few have produced recordings as spine tingling and primal as pioneering German sound artist Thomas Köner. Köner was one of the leading lights of electronic minimalism in the '90s, arguably on par with Moritz Von Oswald and Wolfgang Voigt for breaking boundaries and pushing into new terrain, although his landscape was more extreme and less amenable towards finding new audiences. He's spent most of the past decade in self-imposed obscurity, never following up on his more popular techno guise as Porter Ricks or furthering his prolific brand of ambient doom beyond 2003's Zyklop, his last widely available release. But his template has since been picked up by numerous ambient doom practitioners, amongst them Sunn O))), Svarte Greiner, Oren Ambrachi and much of the UK Type label's roster. It's fitting that Type is reissuing Köner's first three long-out-of-print albums ― 1990's Nunatek, 1992's Teimo and 1993's Permafrost ―collecting them in one lavishly designed package. Taken together, these records showcase the transitory roots of the ambient doom that's so popular today. Köner takes the roots of avant-garde musique concrete forefathers like Asmus Tietchens and blends them with the ambient techno of the day to make utterly sparse and compelling soundtracks to our deepest demons.