Thomas Köner
The meditative sound of gongs is currently causing a stir within the New Age movement. Thomas Köner removes the gong from this sleep-inducing straitjacket. He starts from tension instead of relaxation in sound and playing, he places contact microphones on gongs and processes them by means of effect equipment. The result of this very unusual approach is an ominous soundscape that is reminiscent of the music of Asmus Tietchens and Soviet France. Absolute Spitzenklasse!
Thomas Köner started his musical activities in unusual spaces. For example, he realized sounds in a parking garage, in part with activated technology, constructed sound structures for the Bochum planetarium and performed in factory halls as well as in places in the countryside. Köner ended these activities because they forced him to the surface too much; they seemed too fleeting to him. In 1989 he produced the CD “Nunatak Gongamur (Barooni).
Köner has a preference for metal (clear) sounds. During his music studies he started to work with gongs. The space-filling, acoustic gong sound and the distractions extracted with contact microphones, which he distorts live electronically and amplifies via a PA system, form the basis for his music.
Köner, who calls every form of rhythm and melody a pleasant ailment, puts the pure sound experience in the foreground in his concerts. However, this has nothing to do with crackles and noise. He seems much more to exorcise some form of cold silence. A cold silence in which calm and static seem to awaken to a disturbing life in the slowness of metal softness, and which lies on the other side of all relaxation. A situation that is perhaps not at all viable outside of his music.