Biography
Thomas Köner stands among a small group of artists bridging contemporary avant-garde composition, techno, and indie rock. He issued a run of minimalist ambient albums on the Dutch Barooni imprint, produced austere and lo-fi techno alongside Andy Mellwig under the Porter Ricks name, and contributed to recordings by both Bill Laswell’s Divination and Sonic Boom’s EAR ensemble. Born in Germany, Köner launched his recording career with the 1990 Barooni release Nunatak Gongamur, the first installment in a sequence of albums whose sole sonic source was gongs. The following year brought the darkly atmospheric and bass-rich Teimo, an album that secured his reputation within ambient circles. Permafrost arrived in 1993 and received further praise, while the even more reduced Aubrite appeared on the same label in 1995.
During 1996 Köner took part in Distill, a project album by Bill Laswell’s ambient-dub outfit Divination that assembled experimental composers Paul Schütze, Pete Namlook, Anton Fier, Haroumi Hosono, Mick Harris, and Tetsu Inoue. He also lent his name to the EAR album The Köner Experiment, which he created with rhythm and programming assistance from Andy Mellwig; the pair had already issued several EPs of shadowy techno as Porter Ricks, later gathered on the 1996 Chain Reaction release Biokinetics. Porter Ricks’ second, self-titled album surfaced on Mille Plateaux in 1997, the same year the label combined Teimo and Permafrost into a double CD and Big Cat included Köner’s Nuuk disc in the four-CD Driftworks ambient anthology. His solo album Kaamos followed on Mille Plateaux in 1998, and Force Inc. issued a Porter Ricks split album with Techno Animal the next year.
In the early 2000s Köner began an association with the German experimental label Die Stadt. With Asmus Tietchens he formed the project Kontakt der Jünglinge, releasing multiple albums on the imprint, and he also appeared on limited split 7-inch singles with Tietchens and Illusion of Safety. The solo album Unerforschtes Gebiet came out on Die Stadt in 2001, initially pressed as a picture-disc LP. He maintained ties with Mille Plateaux, issuing the live recording Daikan in early 2002 and the collaborative double CD Zyklop in 2003. The label’s short-lived successor reissued Nuuk with an accompanying DVD in 2004.
Following a period of inactivity, Köner resurfaced in 2009 with La Barca, an expansive work built from field recordings captured in major cities worldwide. Type reissued his first three albums in 2010 and Biokinetics in 2012; that same year Touch released the new album Novaya Zemlya. A 2014 live collaboration with Jana Winderen in Normandy, France, was issued by Touch as the digital-only album Cloître. Also in 2014 Denovali brought out the sparse, piano-focused Tiento de las Nieves. The Von label issued the DVD The Futurist Manifesto, Köner’s mini-opera concerning the Italian Futurist movement, in 2015. Denovali followed with the second installment of the Tiento series, Tiento de la Luz, in 2016. The next year Köner rejoined Andy Mellwig for Anguilla Electrica, the duo’s first collection of new material since 1999, while Touch supplied a physical edition of the Winderen collaboration Cloître.
During 1996 Köner took part in Distill, a project album by Bill Laswell’s ambient-dub outfit Divination that assembled experimental composers Paul Schütze, Pete Namlook, Anton Fier, Haroumi Hosono, Mick Harris, and Tetsu Inoue. He also lent his name to the EAR album The Köner Experiment, which he created with rhythm and programming assistance from Andy Mellwig; the pair had already issued several EPs of shadowy techno as Porter Ricks, later gathered on the 1996 Chain Reaction release Biokinetics. Porter Ricks’ second, self-titled album surfaced on Mille Plateaux in 1997, the same year the label combined Teimo and Permafrost into a double CD and Big Cat included Köner’s Nuuk disc in the four-CD Driftworks ambient anthology. His solo album Kaamos followed on Mille Plateaux in 1998, and Force Inc. issued a Porter Ricks split album with Techno Animal the next year.
In the early 2000s Köner began an association with the German experimental label Die Stadt. With Asmus Tietchens he formed the project Kontakt der Jünglinge, releasing multiple albums on the imprint, and he also appeared on limited split 7-inch singles with Tietchens and Illusion of Safety. The solo album Unerforschtes Gebiet came out on Die Stadt in 2001, initially pressed as a picture-disc LP. He maintained ties with Mille Plateaux, issuing the live recording Daikan in early 2002 and the collaborative double CD Zyklop in 2003. The label’s short-lived successor reissued Nuuk with an accompanying DVD in 2004.
Following a period of inactivity, Köner resurfaced in 2009 with La Barca, an expansive work built from field recordings captured in major cities worldwide. Type reissued his first three albums in 2010 and Biokinetics in 2012; that same year Touch released the new album Novaya Zemlya. A 2014 live collaboration with Jana Winderen in Normandy, France, was issued by Touch as the digital-only album Cloître. Also in 2014 Denovali brought out the sparse, piano-focused Tiento de las Nieves. The Von label issued the DVD The Futurist Manifesto, Köner’s mini-opera concerning the Italian Futurist movement, in 2015. Denovali followed with the second installment of the Tiento series, Tiento de la Luz, in 2016. The next year Köner rejoined Andy Mellwig for Anguilla Electrica, the duo’s first collection of new material since 1999, while Touch supplied a physical edition of the Winderen collaboration Cloître.
Albums
