Monday, March 9, 2009

Mokira - Persona

Read my entire review on The Silent Ballet.

Mokira has made a mature-sounding album. It's also pretty: pretty boring. The spark of life is dim. I hear his previous album, Album, is much better, and I'll go find that one. As a fan of ambient music, I believe there are other musicians doing this sort of thing much better.

The Spacemen 3 ode "Oscillations and Tremolo" takes the cake, though, for its flaccid attempt at profundity. Just as the title suggests, it's a slowly-metamorphing series of synthesized patterns. The only time I found this song interesting was while out on a long walk, when the negative space between the oscillations gave way to the constant sound of traffic. The song became a ghost of its former self; almost unheard. You can perform this experiment on your own, by the way, by repeatedly cupping your ears with your hands, but Mokira does it for ten minutes - beat that! If you're just relaxing at home without loud background noise, this track just reeks of annoyance. It's like waking up at 8 a.m. in the abandoned post-rave factory and realizing that someone left the strobe light on. Ugh. Take me to Denny's.

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