|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2LP
|
|
MP 049LP
|
Double LP version. First ever vinyl release. Reissue, originally released in 2002. "The Earth is burning, covering all environments in ashes. Smoke comes to us from computers -- from social networks accelerating the spread of burnt affects, damaging our ability to feel and respond to what the planet strives to express. We need to cool down. Thomas Köner's music can help change the pace of our perceptions: 1) In Daikan (2002) -- a Japanese term meaning 'the coldest' or 'the coldest part of the year' -- the ear stretches until touching the depth of time that persists in the ice; a sonic drama offers the slowness thanks to which the skin of perceptions can reconstitute themselves; icequakes awaken listeners to the frozen life without scaring them. 2) 'Banlieue du Vide', considered by many to be Thomas Köner's most iconic audiovisual work and best kept secret, has not been released previously. It is in the collection of a couple of art museums, e.g. the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and has been awarded the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica in 2004, in the category Digital Musics. Banlieue du Vide is the result of months of time-lapse observations of empty streets in the Finnish Arctic Circle, shown in glacially slow slow-motion. Phase cancellation, on which all noise cancelling technology is based, here affects the perception of time, the sense of the flow of time extinguishing itself. At this stage the void is not yet empty, traces of past noise fill the listeners mind with their haunting presence. A remastered stereo version of the soundtrack is released as a special premiere as a bonus track of the Daikan album. Listening to this album, an excess of heat turns into an empowering coldness -- like the transient feeling of our terrestrial embodiment in the midst of entropy." --Fréderic Neyrat, October 2022
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
MP 049CD
|
Reissue, originally released in 2002. "The Earth is burning, covering all environments in ashes. Smoke comes to us from computers -- from social networks accelerating the spread of burnt affects, damaging our ability to feel and respond to what the planet strives to express. We need to cool down. Thomas Köner's music can help change the pace of our perceptions: 1) In Daikan (2002) -- a Japanese term meaning 'the coldest' or 'the coldest part of the year' -- the ear stretches until touching the depth of time that persists in the ice; a sonic drama offers the slowness thanks to which the skin of perceptions can reconstitute themselves; icequakes awaken listeners to the frozen life without scaring them. 2) 'Banlieue du Vide', considered by many to be Thomas Köner's most iconic audiovisual work and best kept secret, has not been released previously. It is in the collection of a couple of art museums, e.g. the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and has been awarded the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica in 2004, in the category Digital Musics. Banlieue du Vide is the result of months of time-lapse observations of empty streets in the Finnish Arctic Circle, shown in glacially slow slow-motion. Phase cancellation, on which all noise cancelling technology is based, here affects the perception of time, the sense of the flow of time extinguishing itself. At this stage the void is not yet empty, traces of past noise fill the listeners mind with their haunting presence. A remastered stereo version of the soundtrack is released as a special premiere as a bonus track of the Daikan album. Listening to this album, an excess of heat turns into an empowering coldness -- like the transient feeling of our terrestrial embodiment in the midst of entropy." --Fréderic Neyrat, October 2022
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
MP 034LP
|
Double LP version. Aubrite was first released 1995 on the label Barooni. Thomas Köner is one of the most influential modernist minimal composers. His music is often defined as dark ambient or drone, because of the use of low frequencies, material from gongs, shadowy resonances and boreal ambience, but at the same time its sound with constant fluctuation and vulnerability of sonic events, what makes it organic, human and almost comforting. Köner's soundscapes are no longer simply dark, the question now is that of a profound blackness. Such is the generic darkness of the abyss, the void and vacuum, the darkness of more than silence, of catastrophe and cataclysm, but also the soundscapes have utopian moments. It is a cosmological blackness, the black of nonbeing. "The more subtractive, the blacker the sound synthesis", Köner writes. Such blackness is non-music. Music will never be music until it ceases to represent and begins to sound like non-music or monochrome. "Whoever hears the distortion of all sounds, will soon become Ultrablack. Whoever listens to this world, but has no affection for any of its sites, even to the place of Black Noise, may soon reach Ultrablack. Whoever understands the spirit of impartiality through ten thousand million partial tones, hears Ultrablack and can no longer be measured. No measures, no enclosures, no properties are the sign of ultrablack scores." Roland Speckle helped with production of the album. Aubrite is the name of a group of meteorites named for Aubres, a small achondrite meteorite that fell near Nyons in 1836. Includes two bonus tracks. Double LP version marks the first time the album has been released on vinyl.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
MP 006LP
|
Double LP version. "Motus is more (to me) than just music made with analog synthesizers, it is about attitude, a way of relating to sound and the affects. A lifestyle, where movement, being moved and moving become one. My practice is vibrational, about the skin, touch and surfaces and the gaseous medium in between. I dream of a dance floor where Motus would be enjoyed. What kind of world, or rather, what kind of society would allow that? And when? Is this futuristic? A situation-to-come, where the understanding of music expands greatly, when blissful moments are independent of simple melodies, where harmony appears beyond I-V-vi-IV chord progressions, when the techniques of social alienation, which determine the use of all the drugs that accompany recreational music, are reversed into creative tools of exploration. Motus is part of this exploration: to find dance, free of clock, and groove, free of rhythm. There is pulsation, and the downbeat connects to the downward beings as in stones and minerals, the upbeat connects to the upward beings as in grasses, flowers, trees and stars. Binding both together, connecting sky and earth, is the dancer. The moves/the movement is pure. It is the kiss of spirit and matter." --Thomas Köner
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
MP 006CD
|
"Motus is more (to me) than just music made with analog synthesizers, it is about attitude, a way of relating to sound and the affects. A lifestyle, where movement, being moved and moving become one. My practice is vibrational, about the skin, touch and surfaces and the gaseous medium in between. I dream of a dance floor where Motus would be enjoyed. What kind of world, or rather, what kind of society would allow that? And when? Is this futuristic? A situation-to-come, where the understanding of music expands greatly, when blissful moments are independent of simple melodies, where harmony appears beyond I-V-vi-IV chord progressions, when the techniques of social alienation, which determine the use of all the drugs that accompany recreational music, are reversed into creative tools of exploration. Motus is part of this exploration: to find dance, free of clock, and groove, free of rhythm. There is pulsation, and the downbeat connects to the downward beings as in stones and minerals, the upbeat connects to the upward beings as in grasses, flowers, trees and stars. Binding both together, connecting sky and earth, is the dancer. The moves/the movement is pure. It is the kiss of spirit and matter." --Thomas Köner
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
MP 034CD
|
Aubrite was first released 1995 on the label Barooni. Thomas Köner is one of the most influential modernist minimal composers. His music is often defined as dark ambient or drone, because of the use of low frequencies, material from gongs, shadowy resonances and boreal ambience, but at the same time its sound with constant fluctuation and vulnerability of sonic events, what makes it organic, human and almost comforting. Köner's soundscapes are no longer simply dark, the question now is that of a profound blackness. Such is the generic darkness of the abyss, the void and vacuum, the darkness of more than silence, of catastrophe and cataclysm, but also the soundscapes have utopian moments. It is a cosmological blackness, the black of nonbeing. "The more subtractive, the blacker the sound synthesis", Köner writes. Such blackness is non-music. Music will never be music until it ceases to represent and begins to sound like non-music or monochrome. "Whoever hears the distortion of all sounds, will soon become Ultrablack. Whoever listens to this world, but has no affection for any of its sites, even to the place of Black Noise, may soon reach Ultrablack. Whoever understands the spirit of impartiality through ten thousand million partial tones, hears Ultrablack and can no longer be measured. No measures, no enclosures, no properties are the sign of ultrablack scores." Roland Speckle helped with production of the album. Aubrite is the name of a group of meteorites named for Aubres, a small achondrite meteorite that fell near Nyons in 1836. Includes two bonus tracks.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
MP 027LP
|
LP version. Mille Plateaux present a reissue of Thomas Köner's Nuuk, originally published as one of four CDs on the 1997 compilation Driftworks and re-released in 2004 by MillePlateauxMedia. Thomas Köner is one of the most influential modernist minimal composers. Alongside Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, Köner has been centrally responsible for electronic music's fascination with depth and reduction. His signature sound is vast, seemingly endless, which at first seems homogenous and infinite, but once exposed to it, when our senses calibrate to the fine nuances of changes, you discover and immerse into abundance of textures, richness of modulations, and almost infinite range of sonic titillations. Köner's work was inspired by his frequent travels in the Arctic, and listeners feel his music as a journey to mysterious worlds of the Arctic region. The experience of being exposed to the extreme cold, the heightening of our senses and ability to notice even the slightest changes in color, sound, light or density that creates this dangerously reductive environment, is like an immersion in the sonic world of this German artist, where masterfully crafted layers of sound open into colossal spaces, teeming with aural life, waiting to be discovered by those who venture into it. The titles of Köner's highly regarded albums from the '90s ever so often play with this affinity -- Nunatak, Permafrost, Teimo -- all reference to the world of the Artic region, just as his album Nuuk that points us to the capital of Greenland. Subdued and minimal at first glance, this album is brimming with low-end frequencies, shadowy resonances, and boreal ambience, but at the same time, constant fluctuation and vulnerability of sonic events, makes it very organic, human and almost comforting, like the tiny harbor existing in the sea of ice, it is named after. It also served as the source of music material and inspiration for Thomas Köner's video art by the same title, which was awarded a Tiger Cub Award at the 34th International Film Festival in Rotterdam a year later.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
MP 027CD
|
Mille Plateaux present a reissue of Thomas Köner's Nuuk, originally published as one of four CDs on the 1997 compilation Driftworks and re-released in 2004 by MillePlateauxMedia. Thomas Köner is one of the most influential modernist minimal composers. Alongside Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, Köner has been centrally responsible for electronic music's fascination with depth and reduction. His signature sound is vast, seemingly endless, which at first seems homogenous and infinite, but once exposed to it, when our senses calibrate to the fine nuances of changes, you discover and immerse into abundance of textures, richness of modulations, and almost infinite range of sonic titillations. Köner's work was inspired by his frequent travels in the Arctic, and listeners feel his music as a journey to mysterious worlds of the Arctic region. The experience of being exposed to the extreme cold, the heightening of our senses and ability to notice even the slightest changes in color, sound, light or density that creates this dangerously reductive environment, is like an immersion in the sonic world of this German artist, where masterfully crafted layers of sound open into colossal spaces, teeming with aural life, waiting to be discovered by those who venture into it. The titles of Köner's highly regarded albums from the '90s ever so often play with this affinity -- Nunatak, Permafrost, Teimo -- all reference to the world of the Artic region, just as his album Nuuk that points us to the capital of Greenland. Subdued and minimal at first glance, this album is brimming with low-end frequencies, shadowy resonances, and boreal ambience, but at the same time, constant fluctuation and vulnerability of sonic events, makes it very organic, human and almost comforting, like the tiny harbor existing in the sea of ice, it is named after. It also served as the source of music material and inspiration for Thomas Köner's video art by the same title, which was awarded a Tiger Cub Award at the 34th International Film Festival in Rotterdam a year later.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
TO 085CD
|
Novaya Zemlya (lit. "New Land"), also known in Dutch as "Nova Zembla" and in Norwegian as "Gåselandet" (lit. the "Goose Land"), is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe, lying at Cape Flissingsky on the northern island. The artwork, by Jon Wozencroft, includes an essay by Thierry Charollais, "Thomas Köner's Novaya Zemlya: towards a metaphysical geography"... Of course we find the unique Köneresque glowing drones that we know from his previous works. But we will also be touched by an unrevealed, barely perceptible sense of melody and harmony that Köner has gradually developed since Kaamos (1998) and Nuuk (2004)." Thomas Köner (b. 1965) is a pioneering multimedia artist whose main interest lies in combining visual and auditory experiences. Over his long, much celebrated career, he has worked between installation works, sound art, minimal soundscapes, and as one-half of Porter Ricks. He attended music college in Dortmund and studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem. Until 1994, he worked in the film industry as editor and sound engineer. Thomas has extended his concept of time and sound color to images, resulting in video installations, photography and net art. His point of departure was composition of sound in which aspects of a performance and visual language were gradually integrated. At first in the collaboration with film artist Jürgen Reble and the live performance Alchemie (1992). Following this, he started to compose film soundtracks and music to accompany historic silent films for the Louvre Museum and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, who called him a major innovator in the contemporary music scene, as well as noted his collaborative practice which has led to his working with musicians, filmmakers and visual artists on installations and sound performances, and to his creation of six video works produced in two cycles, starting in 2003. Mastered by Denis Blackham.
|
|
|
|