MOKIRA: Persona (Type Recordings)

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Posted on Mar 31st 2009 12:48 am

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Mokira: Persona

MOKIRA
Persona
TYPE047
Type Recordings 2009
07 Tracks. 53mins07secs

Icon: arrow Buy: CD | MP3

Mokira is one of the many projects from Swedish musician Andreas Tilliander, who began operating under this particular banner in 2000, when Chiphop was released. He has since released a handful of albums and EPs on various labels. Two years on from his last album, Hateless, published on Swedish imprint Ideal Recordings, Tilliander returns to Type, five years after his first output for the label, with the eighth Mokira album.

Continuing on the path set with previous records, Tilliander creates once again a series of dense glitch-infused decaying electronic pieces which linger around textural atmospheric soundscapes. Each composition is left to develop over a long period of time, with only occasional rhythmic components to mark the way. Tracks bleed seamlessly into one another, giving this album a constant and steady flow. This greatly enhances the hypnotic characteristic of Tilliander’s music, especially as the album progresses and one gets deeper into the mood. Contour, Valla Torg Kraut and Oscillations And Tremolo, the three central compositions, seem plucked from clearer and more defined sound forms than the rest, and, while entirely drum-less, all carry some rhythmic feature.

On the two opening pieces, About Last Step And Scale and Lord, Am I Going Down, Tilliander deliberately remains into much murkier territories and deals with distressed sounds and deeply atmospheric textures. The epic opening piece in particular sounds like the sonic equivalent of an old sepia photograph, with occasional noises materialising in the background, always out of focus and totally worn out. The process is not as intense on Lord, Am I Going Down, but Tilliander returns to it with the closing two tracks, Ode To The Ode To The Street Hassle, with its saturated main melodic theme and damaged aura, and the more orchestral Invitation To Love, which echoes some of the darker corners of Miasmah and could almost pass for isolationist if it didn’t carry such a swelling melody.

On Persona, Andreas Tilliander returns to the dark and dense ambiences of previous releases and continues to create stunning music out of very minimal sound sources, and while the overall mood doesn’t depart much from other Mokira outputs, the refinement and elegance shown here is almost unequalled.

4.8/5

Icon: arrow Andreas Tilliander | Andreas Tilliander (MySpace) | Type Recordings
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