Markus Guentner Announces IN MOLL Anniversary Edition

Image Cred Throughout: David Westlake

Markus Guentner’s IN MOLL is coming back in a 25th Anniversary Edition on Black Knoll Editions, giving one of early-2000s ambient music’s key releases a more complete physical form. The album will be released November 6, 2026, with preorders open now, and the first track from the edition, IN MOLL 4, is already available (which you can stream below).

That detail matters because IN MOLL 4 was left off the original vinyl pressing and that’s a big thing we should be focusing on…

This anniversary edition restores the piece and brings it to vinyl for the first time, which makes the reissue feel less like a simple archival reset and more like a correction to the album’s physical history.

Originally released in 2001, IN MOLL arrived during the formative years around Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series, where Guentner quickly became one of the names tied to that softer, slower, more textural side of electronic music. The album works in delicate melodic fragments, slow harmonic movement, deep bass tones, and a patient sense of scale. It never needed dramatic gestures to make its point.

Its power has always come from the way it lets sound hang in the air.

That restraint is part of why the record still feels relevant. Ambient music can date itself when the atmosphere feels tied to a production fashion. IN MOLL has lasted because it feels built from fewer, better decisions.

Kompakt History Still Shapes the Record

Before IN MOLL, Guentner had already contributed to the first Kompakt Pop Ambient compilation, including Regensburg 1, named after his Bavarian hometown. Those early recordings caught the attention of Kompakt founders Michael Mayer and Wolfgang Voigt, helping place Guentner inside one of the most important ambient-adjacent conversations happening in electronic music at the time.

Mayer recalls hearing Guentner’s music with Voigt and knowing they had found something unusually beautiful.

Voigt has since described Guentner as one of the first and most important ambient artists connected to Kompakt, calling his music a lasting part of the label’s Pop Ambient history.

For more context around Kompakt’s broader place in electronic music, my interview with Weval on Kompakt is a relevant companion. Different era and different sound, but it points back to the same label culture that allowed patient electronic records to find serious listeners.

Rafael Anton Irisarri Gives the Album a New Physical Form

Black Knoll Editions founder Rafael Anton Irisarri newly remastered IN MOLL in full analog for the 25th Anniversary Edition. That choice gives the reissue a particular kind of care. Ambient records depend heavily on tone, low-end bloom, decay, and the fine details around silence, so remastering can either protect the original feeling or flatten it into something too clean.

We covered Irisarri’s own creative language in my feature on Points of Inaccessibility, and his work has often dealt with scale, erosion, and emotional weight inside long-form sound. His presence here makes sense. He knows how delicate music can become heavy without getting loud.

That thread also carries into my coverage of Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri’s Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, where patience and density do a lot of the emotional work. With IN MOLL, Irisarri is handling a record that helped shape the language he later entered from his own direction.

IN MOLL Lands November 6

Markus Guentner’s IN MOLL 25th Anniversary Edition will be released November 6, 2026 on Black Knoll Editions.

The edition includes the restored IN MOLL 4, newly remastered full analog audio by Rafael Anton Irisarri, new visual presentation from Guentner, and a digital and vinyl release format. Preorders are open now.