Friday, November 27, 2009

Thomas Köner - La Barca [2009]


1 35° 40' N 139° 42' E Hour One
2 43° 42' N 7° 16' E Hour Two
3 45° 26' N 12° 20' E Hour Three
4 28° 41' N 17° 45' W Hour Four
5 41° 53' N 12° 29' E Hour Five
6 33° 31' N 36° 19' E Hour Six
7 48° 52' N 2° 21' E Hour Seven
8 30° 3' N 31° 14' E Hour Eight
9 78° 54' N 18° 1' E Hour Nine
10 31° 46' N 35° 13' E Hour Ten
11 42° 7' N 19° 6' E Hour Eleven
12 41° 24' N 2° 10' E Hour Twelve

"In a barque she sails across the high lands of the past.
The barque heads shimmer and glow at stern and bow,
and that lights her unseeable passage.
She calls to the spirits of this hour, and that is how we come to even hear her voice."

There are few artists in the world of recorded music who have such an innate understanding of the use of silence and atmosphere as Thomas Köner. Next to Helge Sten, The Hafler Trio or Mika Vainio, Köner is an acclaimed master of ultra-subtle ambient acoustics, providing some of the finest records on labels like Mille Plateaux, Die Stadt and Chain Reaction, both under his birth name, and as half of seminal techno act Porter Ricks. Like a friendly apparition emerging from the ether, his latest album - the first in nearly five years - has just dropped into our world, with little prior warning, to completely remove us from our day and place us within an environment coloured with moving air, tones of sublime melancholy and indistinct aural landscapes. The tracks are titled by a set of coordinates, which we're sure the more intrigued folks out there will be researching on Google maps, but those looking to leave the mystery intact can attempt to imagine the locations through their associated voices, languages and surrounding aura. For example, without checking, on '48º 52' N 2º 21' E' you could be standing in a train station in Azerbaijan, wrapped up in an intangible moment of cinematic bliss, while on '31º 46' N 19º 6' E' one feels like a ghost in the midst of a Central American pueblo, or somewhere completely unknown. This is music ripe for the imagination, from an unrivaled mind dedicated to enhanced auditory experience and deserves undivided attention from anyone unafraid to let themselves be taken by it. - Boomkat


http://www.myspace.com/thomaskoner

http://linksave.in/6255794974b10638794595
FLAC (lossless) w/ CUE

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buen disco de Köner, un paseo por el mundo.

Anonymous said...

Listened to this last night at work (on ipod). Blew my fucking head off. Talk about lost in sound. The word invisible soundtracks sprung to mind.

 
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