Nunatak

Köner, a German multimedia artist, uses gongs — brushed, mostly, but sometimes struck underwater, with the sounds then subject to radical electronic manipulation — to create infinitely patient pieces that evoke the sensation of wandering through an endless frozen wasteland, or sitting inside a ship trapped in the ice. Creaks, groans, hisses and drones, some high-pitched and others so low you can feel your sternum rattle, rise and fall in waves, or as if generated far away and carried to you on the wind. Nunatak is the first volume in a trilogy, followed by Teimo and Permafrost, all originally released separately between 1990 and 1993, and all of which are landmarks in dark ambient music. This is wintry music in multiple senses: it evokes cold and isolation, and it has the implacability of extreme weather; it is indifferent to your suffering. So if you’re inexorably drawn to its beauty, what does that say about you?