Thomas Koner - Nunatak

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Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Brian on Thu 27 May, 2010.

Now I don't know shit about this guy, my landlord rang me up to ask if I knew where he could get a copy from, so I read up a bit about this release and was fully intrigued to the max. This is the first in a triptych of seminal "dark ambient" albums, this particular title originally on CD only from 1992. His usage & endorsement of gongs and wind instruments helps creates an ominous booming atmosphere, an incredibly malevolent, portentous sound that conjures up thoughts of traipsing across a lonely Arctic Tundra, at dusk, knowing you could be ripped apart by a starving wooly rabid mammoth style creature at any given moment. So it works more like a powerful mood soundtrack, taking you into the perilous icy vortices & chasms of your mind whilst concurrently providing you with a strange form of comfort & relief. The frequencies you get on this vinyl pressing are quite unnerving, especially in amongst the quieter, sparse passages, reminding us of some deep electronic whale music - this record totally breathes life man! i'm taking 'Nunatak' home tonight to test in my own more peaceful surroundings because the click, clunk, rattle, scrunch & clatter of this office is not the sensory embellishment I want right now.....

* Very special 2010 issue of this seminal album, first in a series of 3.* Originally released in 1992 and never previously available on vinyl.* Cut at Berlin’s Dubplates and Mastering* Strictly limited copies only (black vinyl)* It is with a certain amount of pride then that Type can reveal this re-issue of Thomas Köner’s debut album, the firstin a set of three, on vinyl for the very first time. Originally introduced to the world in 1992, ‘Nunatak’ (then named‘Nunatak Gongamur’) was shockingly ahead of its time, and it is hard to believe that it has been out of print and difficultto obtain for so long.* Koner created the album with mood in mind; he has since been described as a ‘media’ artist, and it’s easy to see why.While the music can be described as ‘dark ambient’, these soundscapes elicit a widescreen collection of images.Through careful and measured use of gongs (recorded in different rooms and underwater) as well as homemade windinstruments, Köner created an album that would become a cornerstone of the genre and part of a tryptich of recordswhich to my mind have never been bettered. While the album is almost twenty years old at this point, it still sounds totallyalien and totally unique.* In these eleven brief, unnamed tracks, Köner guides us among battered lands, barren ice plains and damaged caves.Through the low-end resonance of his percussion we are dragged into a hallowed chasm of doom-laden drone. Therehave been many tries at this style since ‘Nunatak’ was first birthed, and many attempts to draw the genre into fresh andre-imagined territory, but few have come even close to the shadowy exclusion of Thomas Köner.