MP3: Mokira - Lord, am I going down?
Mokira is one of Andreas Tilliander's many aliases and "Persona" is his most recent release as such, his second for the label Type. Billed as an exercise in pure analog electronics, I expected to be greeted by various pleasant bleeps and bloops, but what I got instead was dull as doornails minimalist ambiance. Drone doesn't have to be dull, nor should it be, yet this record goes nowhere. It's odd too because it's generally pleasant to listen to, just entirely non-compelling. Witness "Lord, am I going down?", one of the album's slightly more dramatic tracks. The listener is treated to gentle waves of sound, deep, chiming echoes and subtle textural shifts, but it eventually just collapses into an extended wash. There's hardly any negative space and the total dynamics are near-nil. At the end it simply drifts effortlessly into the next cut. My emotional resonance is zero. After many repeated listens, I can only say: I don't care.
Mokira - Lord, am I going down?