HAVEN PRESENTS: MOKOTRON
Seismic Electronic artist Mokotron spoke to Tasha Tziakis ahead of their live debut performance at Arcadia in Ōtautahi this weekend.
Mokotron is about to leave the underground world of Indigenous seismic bass and bring it up to the surface. Why have you decided to unveil and perform live?
There’s a bunch of reasons. I needed the right event: a couple months to prepare, a dope venue, a proper sound system, a visionary promoter I respected, killer support acts. HAVEN and Keepsakes ticked all those boxes. I think also my focus has shifted – while I’ve pursued international recognition and releases my strongest support base is still here in Aotearoa and Te Wai Pounamu. I need to focus on making Māori tunes too rather than just copying overseas genres. Signing to Sunreturn Records locally also made me realise I’d eventually need to do release parties, and it would be pretty stressful playing your first live gig at your own release party.
What has the preparation looked like for bringing Mokotron to a live audience?
It’s been pretty intensive, about three months of practice learning to play puoro, vocoder, synths and dubs live, trying to nail the sound on the recordings while leaving space to freestyle and improvise. My puoro playing has improved a lot. I never realised how much space there was in my tunes until I started performing them. I think future recordings will have much more of a live feel to them, less loop based. It’s had positive impacts on my breathing and fitness too. The most exciting aspect for me has been that I’ve found myself drawing on elements of whaikōrero in practice. I’m starting to develop a weird blend between whaikōrero and vocoder raps.
What role does community play in how you create and promote your music? Considering that Mokotron has remained relatively a digital being.
There’s a real contradiction there. Music is a tiny part of my life. My main work is teaching Māori history and culture and playing leadership roles in Māori learning institutions. My whole life is working with our people, for our people. Mokotron is my one escape from that, so really I’m not thinking about anyone when I’m writing music, I’m trying to express through sound, what it looks like in my head.
How was it to win Best EP Award at the Student Radio Network Awards in 2022?
Such a shock! By some coincidence I was sitting in the one seat in the venue where I couldn’t see the screen, so when everyone was saying ‘You won!’ I was like, how the fuck do you know? I think winning a ‘mainstream’ award for a reo Māori release is the biggest win, that our music can be treated as part of the wider music culture rather than being ghettoised and segregated.
What are you most excited for people to experience this Saturday? What do you hope people take home from your live performance?
How can I say this? I’m trying to make music that is buzzy af. Music you hear that makes you go, is this real? Am I imagining this? I’m trying to make songs that sound like a Māori robot chanting pātere in a cave in the future a thousand years ago. I tell you how I know my tunes are finished – when my kids come running into my studio crying cause it sounds like there are ghosts in the house, that’s ready. I want people to experience that… ridiculousness. Yes, there is someone stupid enough to drop whaikōrero vocoder raps and play puoro over Amen breaks. That exists in the world. If there is an underlying message there, it is that as Māori we can express our culture in any way we wish, there are no boundaries.
When did the idea to combine Māori mythology and Transformers lore first appear for you? And why?
Transformers were massive in South Auckland in the 80s, and so was break dancing, and so was electro, and this was the era when our people opened their own kura so the next generation could be brought up with their culture and language. So in my head all those things go together, they all happened in the same place at the same time.
How does trauma inform your work sonically? Do you associate certain traumas with correlating beat patterns or frequencies?
I tell you what, I never realised it until I tried getting my tunes mastered. I tried to get Tatau o te Pō mastered overseas. When I compared mixes, their master sounded like a Labrador, from a stable family, with a home and parents and a stable life. My master sounded like a wolf with rabies, and its tail was on fire, and it was running around in circles trying to bite its tail off. Fuck the Labrador, I have to back the wolf. The expression in my tunes comes from trauma, that’s what people are feeling. It’s not patterns or frequencies for me, it’s the mood and vibe. Listen to the start of Tawhito or Tatau o te Pō – that’s the vibe.
What was it like releasing albums Tatau O Te Po and Embrace The Bass via Spanish label, Electro Records?
Just a dream come true. Literally, something I’ve always dreamed of, and it came true. Alek is a respected electro producer and engineer in his own right, so his mastering came back sounding like Kurtis Mantronix on steroids.
Do you hope to keep playing live or is this going to be a special one-off performance?
I might do one gig in Tāmaki and one for the haumī in Wellington. I don’t know if I’ll keep going after that. Putting together a live set has a cost, that’s one whole EP that will never get produced and released. If I’m the only person making reo Māori puoro Māori electronic music, and I stop writing music, that means no one is doing it. So there’s a cost.
What ways have puoro guided your musical journey?
I think when you combine puoro and reo Māori, you can call forth a whole world. So much Māori music is half caste – hip hop but with te reo, metal but with te reo, reggae but with te reo. Puoro allows you to take that step further – it becomes Māori music with other elements, rather than music with Māori elements.
This gig is going to be played at Arcadia with a massive lineup supporting you, did you handpick location and acts? And have you worked with HAVEN before?
That was entirely HAVEN and Keepsakes, but BBYFCEKILLA is my favourite DJ and Keepsakes is my favourite producer alongside Go Nuclear. My dream line up would be me, Go Nuclear, Samara Alofa, Keepsakes, BBYFACEKILLA, so that’s pretty close to a dream line up. I was so excited to hear BBYFACE and Keepsakes were playing I offered to play the warm up set for them LOL.
Where can people best keep up to date with you?
Instagram, Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Facebook. Thankfully no one thought it was a good idea to call themselves ‘Mokotron’ so I’m pretty easy to find.
More information about the gig can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/176817565100608/