Mokira – Time Axis Manipulation review

Andreas Tilliander helped to kick start glitchy hip-hop with his “Cliphop” release a decade ago, and his latest release ensures the Swedish producer is as relevant as ever. The Mokira project’s association with Kontra Musik has already attracted its fair share of high-profile contributors, with Redshape and Silent Servant remixing his work and Marcel Dettmann using his music as a basis for the “Factory Report” single.

As any astute label owner will know, prominent remixers will only get you so far, but thankfully this is not an issue on Time Axis Manipulation. Eschewing the dancefloor almost entirely – allthough there is an urgency to the building river of chords on “Time Track” that would work effectively in conjunction with an accompanying tool track – Tilliander shows his love of abstract sounds and field recordings. This is most audible on the static hisses and hums of “Rainford”, its layers of drizzling noise building to an understated climax, or on “Kendal”, where fragile chords drip gently like beads of rain falling from a spider’s web.

The album is also in tune with the swing towards dub techno techniques, but rather than going down the obvious route inhabited by overladen echo chambers, he delivers the tantalising, half-stepping shanty of “LFU Skank” and the breathy sounds of “Axis Audio” – remixed in suitably laid back style by Cv313. Time Axis Manipulation is quite the understated masterpiece.

Richard Brophy