Totakeke – The Things That Disappear When I Close My Eyes (Tympanik Audio)

New York-based dark electronic producer / composer Frank Mokros is certainly a prolific guy – a scant twelve months after the release of his debut album as Totakeke ‘Elekatota: The Other Side Of The Tracks’ comes this sprawling two disc follow-up effort ‘The Things That Disappear When I Close My Eyes’ (Mokros’ penchant for lengthy album titles remaining firmly in place here). As for the music itself, the 26 tracks collected over the two discs here sees Mokros more or less directly picking up thematically from where ‘Elekatota’ left off, with the predominant aesthetic mood leaning towards the broken, glitchy IDM electronics and forlorn cinematic ambience of that aforementioned album. There’s perhaps slightly more of a noticeable contemporary classical influence that manifests itself amongst the meticulous keyboard arrangements that appear throughout elegantly glacial tracks such as ‘The Past Forgotten’ and ‘Patient HM’, but it’s an ambient sensibility that’s nicely balanced out by the more energetic excursions into twisted, accelerated breakbeats and near-EBM techno influences in evidence on tracks like ‘Disconnected Inside’ and ‘Anterograde Amnesia.’ While this album certainly manages to remain consistently interesting and sees Mokros employing an impressively meticulous approach to production and sound design, the one main criticism to be made is that there’s almost too much to take in here at 71 minutes running length – and that’s not counting the second disc of equal length, which features reworkings of tracks by Flint Glass, Pneumatic Detach and Lucidstatic, alongside several new Totakeke originals. It’s precisely this sheer volume that threatens to undermine the listener’s ability to really enjoy and appreciate the numerous undeniably impressive moments going on here – hopefully, future Totakeke releases will see Mokros opting for more easily digestible portions.