ŌHĀKĪ builds on brooding breakbeats and plaintive koauau; purerehua swipes through the waves of menacing sub frequencies while MOKOTRON questions the legacy of the British Crown and challenges them to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi. 

“ŌHĀKĪ was written in response to the death of Queen Elizabeth,” says MOKOTRON. “Our stolen lands are still held in her name. Now that she has died, who will take responsibility for returning these lands to us? King Charles? I spent my life waiting for a sign that one of them might uphold the agreement reached between my ancestor Kawiti and their ancestor Victoria. Will my children now wait for a freedom that never comes?”

“An ōhākī is a deathbed speech, it can contain prophecy, the passing of the mantle of leadership, exhortations to the living, promises for the future. What ōhākī did Elizabeth make?”

“Before Kawiti died he prophesied in his ōhākī that his descendants should wait till a time when the sandfly nipped at the pages of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and at that time the people would rise up. I reimagine his words here, that perhaps it was Elizabeth herself who was the sandfly that nipped away at the sacred covenant signed between our peoples. To whom does the responsibility fall now, who will lead these issues, and how long will our people wait for justice?”

Delving into the songwriting process behind ŌHĀKĪ, MOKOTRON explains “with ŌHĀKĪ I spent time to really nail the puoro – to get the loudest purerehua sound possible without hitting the mic or breaking the string, to play the koauau and let the phrases develop rather than just looping one section. I pushed to get the throat singing right so it had that deep texture without needing sound effects. I put a lot of effort into nailing the tone and performance while maintaining the scary ‘goosebumps’ feel you hear in my earlier works TATAU O TE PŌ and TAWHITO. The drum and bass throws back to hearing Bryan G drop the Watching Windows remix down at a BPM instore and hearing the way that the most blunt riddim can elevate the soul of a vocal.”

ŌHĀKĪ is accompanied by a music video made in collaboration between animator and video artist Simon Ward & visual artist James Paratii Lainchbury (with assistance from NZ On Air Music). The stark black background gives way to Lainchbury’s intricate line work, which revels in its scary intensity fusing elements of whakairo, horror and ancient futurism. “It looks how my music sounds,” says MOKOTRON. “Paratii’s art has become as much a part of the MOKOTRON project as the music is, so it’s exciting there will now be a third aspect to the project – animation.”

“I explained the meaning and kaupapa of the waiata, but I think more importantly I went into our oral traditions. Our hapū were the first to go to war against the British Empire and the first to defeat them. They had to invent technologies to withstand the power of British artillery and develop military strategies to defeat a far larger, better armed force. The fortifications and artillery bunkers they invented drew their inspiration from nature: Kawiti’s masterpiece fortification was named Ruapekapeka, meaning bat’s nest or bat’s cave. He drew inspiration for the underground artillery bunkers from puru tuna, the nests that eels build in the riverbank to hide in. Paratii and Simon embraced these ideas and they make for some of the most moving motifs in the video, but the narrative and aesthetics of the video were entirely their own.”

“It’s pretty exciting being able to use my existing skills to help bring other artists’ work into the video/animation realm,” says Ward. “It’s kinda like I’m becoming an extra tool for them to present their ideas and stories.”

“The video for ŌHĀKĪ was a bit daunting at first cause I was the outsider coming into MOKOTRON and James’ long running collaboration through illustration and design. Luckily James and I shared a love for 70s/80s, British, politically charged, sci fi comics, which was a very easy common ground to lean into. Basically I just tried to make the animations look as much like Paratii’s incredible illustrations as I could. James’ album cover illustration was very fertile ground to be expanded into a longer story, which he fleshed out easily, linking in MOKOTRON’s creative ideas in the song.”

“I have huge amounts of respect for MOKOTRON” says Paratii. “I strongly believe that he is becoming a figurehead in the emerging postcolonial focused Indigenous electronic music scene here in Aotearoa. I am attempting to visually create an identity for MOKOTRON, the entity, which has similar mana, a kaitiaki from the past for the future, or from the future for the past.”

“Simon I had not met until the video production but I had been an admirer of his work for some time, he is a passionate and enthusiastic creator overflowing with ideas, so it was very easy to collaborate with him. I created & drew all the characters & figures and Simon rendered them as 3d in his animation software.  As I am also a filmmaker (having worked in the industry from 1993 -2012) I could easily break down the narrative ideas into shots and timings which Simon stuck to pretty closely. He would add new elements as it went and then I would finesse them and vice versa.”

“For me when MOKOTRON initially rises out of the inky darkness or te pō at the start is exciting. This is an idea that MOKOTRON and I have been talking about for years. I also enjoy him roaming the land, creating te ngahere. The closing frame where we see Queen Victoria leaving the land and MOKOTRON rising up behind his people is also very powerful. I am extremely proud of this clip and I await to hear the public’s response.

“I know that this is going to be ground zero for a lot of people’s discovery of MOKOTRON – Simon and I have attempted to imbue it with all the mana and wehi that it deserves.”

“I’ve never seen a video like this,” says MOKOTRON. “This is the kind of video I always dreamt of making. This captures the vision. Paratii and Simon have done an amazing job of bringing this MOKOTRON world to life. When I played the video to a small group of friends, the response was gasps and tears. That’s about right.”