Very Special double vinyl edition of Thomas Koner's 'La Barca' album - featuring a whole extra side/over 20 minutes of exclusive material never before available on any format, cut at Berlin's Dubplates and Mastering and pressed up in an edition of just 500 copies for the world. If you're a follower of Drone/Dark Ambient, and have admired the work of anyone from Deathprod to Rhythm & Sound to BJ Nilsen to Chris Watson to Angelo Badalamenti - this will blow your mind* There are few artists in the world of recorded music who have as innate an understanding of silence and atmosphere as Thomas Köner, and fewer still who have exerted as much influence on dark electronic music over the last 20 years. 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, Köner's latest album 'La Barca' - was released on a limited CD edition last year and disappeared before anyone really got a chance to take it in. The album completely removed us from our location and transported us to an environment coloured with moving air, tones of sublime melancholy and indistinct aural landscapes. The tracks titled by a set of coordinates, allowing us to imagine the locations through their associated voices, languages and sonic detritus. 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. On this beautiful vinyl edition, Side D features more than 20 minutes of extra material, extending the concept with intangible location recordings and the kind of layered ambience that grows from a gentle pulse to a colossal mass of sound without you really noticing the process - it just completely takes you in. This is music ripe for the imagination from an unrivalled mind dedicated to enhanced auditory experience, it deserves the undivided attention of anyone unafraid to let themselves be transported into the darkest corners of recorded sound. (Boomkat)