forge
Out on Seil Records
LP+ Digital + Tape
1×LP, Limited Coloured - Silver VINYL - Order on Bleep
Since emerging with his first releases in 2017, Joseph Kamaru AKA KMRU has fast become a key figure in the world of ambient music and its ever shifting definitions. The gargantuan nocturnes of 2020’s Peel on Editions Mego practically catapulted the Nairobian field recorder and versatile producer into view, leading to a prolific stream of works and collaborations across a spectrum of labels. His latest album forge follows in the vein of previous releases for Seil Records, comparatively more pop minded and snapshot like in nature when contextualised in a discography of LP side length explorations and examinations. Yet, no matter the length, melody still percolates through these tracks, patiently dribbling over intertwining notes that liquefy into a sonorous river. The soft rattle of blurry glass tones enters on ‘opener’, with sounds from the outer world leaking in as momentary glitches blip, chirp, and whirr. Sounds like these are gently amplified, muted yet vibrant, thrumming and swooping across active landscapes in playful compositions. Swirling notes of alien birdsong puff and push throughout ‘cine’, joined by fountains of static spewing over long lazing drones. Field recordings and the distorted, fried mbira plucks on tracks like ‘over a placid river’ bring the more earthly tones back into focus, growing blissfully erratic as they plink onwards. As forge merges these sounds in a “blend of melody and noise, rhythm and drone”, it pursues a communion of oscillation, with howling stretches that subtly warp and glide in harmony, ending with the amphibian synths of ‘mago’ jumping in and out of the captivating, mercurial space that KMRU conjures with every effort he has released thus far.
The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far
Temporary Stored II
by KMRU, Aho Ssan, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jessica Ekomane, Bhavisha Panchia
out on 11 October - OFNOT
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The Best Music of 2024 So Far
A rolling list of our favorite albums of the year, updated somewhat frequently.
The Best Ambient Music on Bandcamp, August 2024
“Natur is meditative and sparse. But an inescapable current of anxiety dwells beneath the five movement, 52-minute piece—as if to serve as a faint reminder that even the most casual downtown train ride could somehow go awry on the whim of technology. Using static hums to ponder differences in life between continents, Natur emphasizes KMRU’s ability to make instrumental music that packs the punch of a well-considered essay.“
The Kenyan artist’s new release is a stunning portrait of the electromagnetic sounds and hidden noises of his hometown. In its swelling electrical currents lies a thesis about the richness and drama of everyday sounds.
Boomkat:
KMRU
Natur
KMRU's most visceral and satisfying full-length, 'Natur' is a departure from his more pastoral, drone-based work, tweaking invisible electromagnetic squeals and rumbles into searing noisescapes and evocative orchestral moans. Seriously elevated gear, essential listening for anyone into Christina Kubisch, Fennesz or Kassel Jaeger.
A closer Listen
KMRU ~ Natur (Review)
“Natur offers the sound of the new nature: the aggregate of sounds humans now consider natural, no matter what their source. If the piece sounds lulling rather than unsettling, the damage may already be done.”...”KMRU creates a blended soundtrack of his own relocation.“
“This Idea of Dub as a Philosophy”: A Talk with KMRU and Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug)
A conversation centered around the duo’s debut collaborative release.
Kevin Richard Martin & Joseph Kamaru on exploring Otherness with their joint album Disconnect
“From the bleak and angst-ridden artwork, to the quiet power of spoken word and desolate beats, Disconnect is a succinct and arresting project delving into the complexities of being Othered. KRM and KMRU meditate on several conceptual themes in a way that both expand their own individual practices, while highlighting their shared sensibilities. Though they represent two different generations of electronic musicianship, they found unexpected beauty and nuance in the experimental and collaborative process of creating the record and riffing on the ways they’ve experienced Otherness. Over our three-way call, KRM laughs while explaining “I thought we made a beautiful album, and the first comment I saw online from someone was ‘This is a really heavy record!’”
Disconnect
Kevin Richard Martin / KMRU
The pair’s debut collaboration is an amorphous, droning flood that sounds like the advent of the end times. In its hopeless sound world lies a poignant condemnation of colonial violence.
First Floor #226 –
- KMRU’s music is often hailed for its delicate nature and relative quiet, but the Kenyan artist will soon be releasing something far less orderly into the world: Natur, a long-form composition that’s said to use “dense clouds of static and intimidating, dissonant drones” to “[uncloak] the commotion hidden by the digital era’s ambiguous stillness.” The complete piece will be issued by the Touch label on July 26, but an extended excerpt is available now.
From Coldplay to KMRU: who to see at Glastonbury 2024
“ ....and the marrow-jolting ambience of Kenya’s KMRU (00.00, Friday, both Tree stage). BBT“
KRM & KMRU
Disconnect
The Bug and Joseph Kamaru find common ground and companionship in a stifling world on their album-length collaboration, writes Skye Butchard
"”What’s most impressive is how it merges its two creators. They’ve made a piece that combines their worlds so seamlessly. In doing so, they communicate how it feels to be alone but also what can be made together”
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CLASH MAGAZINE
KRM / The Bug & KMRU -Disconnect
A titanic experience...
“At times it feels like Martin and Kamaru aren’t just making new music but they’re trying to invent a new musical language. Miss at your peril”
The Wire 485
July 2024
KMRU: The Kenyan sound artist finds a new mode of listening on his collaboration with Kevin Martin.
KMRU Details New Album, ‘Natur’
It's the Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist's first record for UK label Touch
KMRU has a new album on the way, titled Natur.
Comprised of a single lengthy piece that the Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist composed in 2022, it marks his debut release for the UK label Touch. Since he first made the piece, it has become a staple of his live sets, which he has used to reshape it into the final form that will be released in July. “I became [the piece],” he said in a statement. “I merged with it on a performance level.”
As with past KMRU works, Natur makes use of various environmental recordings. There are also moments of harsh and static noise, as well as drones, captured using electromagnetic microphones.
Natur will follow on from KMRU’s forthcoming collaboration with Kevin Richard Martin, Disconnect, which is due out in June.
Touch will release Natur on July 26, 2024.
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Kevin Richard Martin and KMRU team up for hypnotic new album: Disconnect
Out 14th June via Phantom Limb
Acclaimed heavyweights Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug) and Joseph Kamaru (KMRU) unite
for the upcoming album Disconnect, out 14th June through UK indie label Phantom Limb.
The LP is a powerful study of dread, hope, and profound sonics that marries depth-trawling
dub with Kamaru’s voice, ambient sensibilities, and negative space.
Pre order Vinyl
REVIEWS
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Kevin Richard Martin (AKA The Bug) and KMRU collaborate on new album, Disconnect
Kevin Richard Martin (AKA The Bug) and KMRU are releasing a collaborative album.Out on June 14th through Phantom Limb,
Disconnect is an exploration of dread, hope and profound sonics. The LP combines dub and ambient with KMRU's vocals, which Martin described as possessing a captivating, lilting, tonal quality."
"
The album originated from an exploration of a text I wrote during my sound art studies, delving into the complexities of otherness, said KMRU. The project served as a response to Audre Lorde's idea that differences should be embraced as a dynamic force within humanity, rather than a perceived threat."
Disconnect follows Martin's run of Machine EPs. He'll also play at Berlin venue Gretchen on April 20th. KMRU's last release was September's Dissolution Grip. He has gigs in Bristol, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow scheduled for next month.
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Minimal Collective
Nurturing sonic worlds: potentials of field recording with KMRU
‘”I think there's always this force exerted from sound that goes beyond what the sound is in itself.’ That same force drives our conversation with KMRU in which we discuss how sound tickles our memories, our idea of home, and our urge to move. The Berlin-based artist contemplates the musical tapestry that ties together our experiences, thoughts, and dreams.”
HEAVY CALMNESS – AN INTERVIEW WITH KMRU
KMRU
Stupor
How does Joseph Kamaru do that? With "Dissolution Grip" the Kenya-born, Berlin-based artist recently released an outstanding ambient album, and the new LP "Stupor" is also convincing. On only three tracks, which all exceed the ten-minute mark, he carefully expands his idea of the genre, how could it be otherwise. KMRU does not need an acoustic sledgehammer to overwhelm. His tracks are constantly, but hardly noticeable, gaining in energy without making senseless noise. The volume that the 18-minute title track reaches after just a third of its playing time has its purpose. Through her and in her, the music unfolds its force, which this time has a more sacred coat of paint than ever.
The foundation of the three pieces is an almost endlessly long drone, on which different elements shoot transversely or submit to the most delicately overmanned river possible. The opener "CPR-12" is reminiscent of works by Eluvium, which contrast sound walls, as large as life itself, with lovely sounds and samples - in this case Christmas-like sound swabs and children's voices. But that's only half the truth: Towards the end, the track changes, and the mood tilts into the morbid, also thanks to the samples that now play on the Hauntology keyboard. On "Even A Tear" the almost familiar lead drone peels from bass white noise. Also here, as always, with a successful outcome.
KMRU US TOUR 2024
ACL 2023 ~ Top Ten Drone
KMRU ~ glim
On glim KMRU deploys austere melody and the richness of texture playing with everything from strings to piano, comfortable with both scraping dissonance, and gentle hum. There’s a lot to feel with on glim as the artist experiments with a wider dynamic range and a more diverse array of sonic textures than on earlier solo albums such as last year’s Epoch. There is delicate beauty here but it is often threatened, whether by timbral effects such as a drone’s warbling or wavering, by piercing volume, or by the multiplication of sonic layering and crushing volume. A sense of place too, a real sense of place, is threatened by technology on this album, its ability to manipulate and fabricate, to overlay and overlap. The limited play with field recording across a quite noisy and sonically dense album might perhaps be interpreted then as an acknowledgment of the perennial threat that someday we ourselves may not be able to locate the natural. (Jennifer Smart)
ACL 2023 ~ The Top 20 Albums of the Year
5) KMRU ~ glim
We’ve been fans of KMRU’s work since before the release of his breakthrough Peel (2020), and have happily watched his reputation grow with each subsequent release. While he has increasingly embraced the synthesizer, field recording remains the core of his practice. Even if Dissolution Grip, released just a few months ago, features no audible field recordings, Kamaru still interpreted the waveforms of selections from his archives as graphic scores for compositions. But glim, released at the beginning of the year, finds the Berlin-based Kenyan artist continuing his delicate fusion of ambient field recordings and meandering synth tones, to great effect. Avoiding the cliches of both practices—no water or bird sounds, no bleeps or bloops—KMRU continues to grow as a composer. Like the album title, all but the final track consists of one word titles, offering a poetic but mostly inscrutable glimpse into the meaning lurking behind the aural scrim. Full of delicate textural manipulation and dynamic arrangements, glim continues to reveal new aspects on each subsequent immersion within its confines. (Joseph Sannicandro)
Finding Resonance: artists Arman Nouri and KMRU on power, sound and practices of listening
Berlin-based musician Joseph Kamaru — a.k.a. KMRU — has been described as an artist who draws from a rich experience of listening, in response to various global and emotional contexts. Arman Nouri — a London-based artist and half of Kin Structures — has been experimenting with programming sound-based events to gather people together, building political and community resonance. Their conversation reflects a rich reflection of and between their respective practices, exploring the potentials of sound in space.
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The Best Albums of 2023: Essential Releases
Nairobi-born, Berlin-based artist Joseph Kamaru (aka KMRU) has an academic approach to sound. This tendency beams especially bright on Dissolution Grip, which is the first release on his new label, OFNOT. The record emerged as a product of his endeavors in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at Universität der Künste. Across three sprawling pieces, KMRU twists the waveforms of field recordings into melodic tones, causing organic textures to feel synthetic and alien. Dissolution Grip contrasts searing dissonance and raw beauty in mesmerizing fashion.
Quietus Albums Of The Year 2023
56. KMRU – Dissolution Grip
The Kenyan artist plays with the very fabric of sound itself on his new record of powerful, sometimes serrated ambient and drone music.
Dissolution Grip Review
“Powerful ambient that creates great things from simple means - arching dynamic changes, long-drawn tones, serious dramaturgy.“ - HHV Mag
Pitchfork DIssolution Grip
The prolific Kenyan-born, Berlin-based electronic musician departs from his typical use of field recordings, but environmental sound still makes its mark on his immersive, long-form explorations.
THE WIRE : 477
ALBUM OF THE DAY
KMRU, “Dissolution Grip”
a record by a musician masterfully bending a myriad of influences to his will.“
LOUD&QUIET
KMRU: Dissolution Grip
(OFNOT)
Dissolution Grip exists outside of time and place, while deep inside them both. As might be expected given his back catalogue, each of the sounds on KMRU’s latest project started as a location-specific field recording, but were ultimately sculpted and retooled in the image of an orchestra, giving up their origins in the pursuit of beauty.
Invité : KMRU
KMRU Launches Label with New Album'Dissolution Grip' LP is scheduled for September 29 release.
We round up 15 announcements from the last few days.
KMRU - Dissolution Grip
Label: OFNOT Release date: September 29th, 2023KMRU announced the first release on his new label, OFNOT, this week, and also revealed a new project on Finnish label Other Power.Stupor
Nairobi-born Berlin-based sound artist Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU, shares his new work Stupor on the new Helsinki-based label Other Power. Commissioned by the Helsinki curatorial and commissioning agency PUBLICS, Stupor is comprised of three original long form tracks. The tracks on the album are speculative notes to social architectures and environments the artist has traversed.
Composed by Joseph Kamaru
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwenbung Mastering
Original photos & artwork by Joseph Kamaru
OBI Design (Publics identity presence) by Valerio Di Lucente
Design by Matti Nives
Co-produced by Performa / PUBLICS / Other Power
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Dissolution Grip
“Dissolution Grip' expands at its own pace until it's a dense wall of harmony, powerful but never completely overwhelming. It's music embedded with a rich sense of place that informs us of KMRU's past and present, and signals where his musical philosophy might take us in the future. “
Pre Order Lp
Bandcamp / ANOST
Out on 29th September at OFNOT
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Drawing Water Reissue , W Abul Mogard
Reissue of KMRU's Drawing Water on Vaagner imprint A Sunken Mall - with the original material spanning the first side of the record in remastered from. The original release contained 3 supple works of porous resonance and intimate motion, giving way to a very heartfelt body of work that peers directly into the fabric of the everyday; gestures, movement, conversation, rendered graciously into waveform. For the second half of the record, the label has taped none other than Abul Mogard, who prepared a new piece by reworking various layers from KMRU’s original compositions.
This new 17 minute long piece, tilted 'Drawing Water On Matching Teal Surfaces' is defined by a continuously cascading and deeply resounding solemnness, which, towards the work’s concluding moments, gradually disperses through a subtle downpour of warm pads, delicately rippling through the fabric of the work, before gently dissolving into thin air."
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Slim Filter
KMRU: Lost in Teufelsberg
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TEMPORARY STORED, PRIX ARS HONORARY MENTION 2023
“(…) Temporary Stored is nonetheless not a rehashing of European colonial violence—this piece rather uses sound as a conjuring of specters of oral and cultural histories of Central and Eastern Africa.”
KMRU scores EXTANT
EXTANT, ON WHAT IS HIDDEN BETWEEN THE APPROPRIATE AND THE INAPPROPRIATE
Choreographer and associate artist Jermaine Maurice Spivey on Extant,
Five Rewire alumni featured on compilation release Remotely Together
Podcast 799: KMRU
Pensive, drifting ambient.
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A Closer Listen
Glim Review
glim cassette- Limited Edition
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Artist Tips: KMRU
The secrets behind the ambient sound artist's work.
Pitchfork Glim Review
This digital-exclusive album from the Berlin-based Kenyan artist sounds blank and unrevealing but opens up to reveal a wealth of detail.
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KMRU’s continuing exploration of reflective ambient space and sound remained top notch on 2023’s glim, one of the artist’s most subtly varied releases yet. With mastering provided by fellow traveller Simon Scott, the twelve piece collection showcases KMRU’s approach around shorter pieces for the most part, with many only just breaking the three minute mark if not four. The expected combination of cryptic field recordings and serene drones can be found but so can crackling disruption on “strain” and the calmest sense of melody on the striking “orna.”
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First Floor #162
KMRU “room” (Self-released)
There’s been no shortage of praise thrown KMRU’s way during the past few years, and much of it has focused on the Kenyan artist’s ability to strip his ambient creations down to the bare essentials. Populated with finely tuned microdetails and unassuming field recordings, KMRU’s compositions often have a quiet grace, their meditative beauty determined as much by what he puts in as what he chooses to leave out. That’s still the case on much of his new album-length release glim, but “room” offers a slight deviation, its lithe drones and orchestral swells displaying a kind of sonic stridency that feels like a new addition to his toolkit. It’s not quite as bold as Limen, his volcanic collaboration with Aho Ssan, but given that project’s raw power, perhaps it’s not surprising to see KMRU bringing a bit more muscle to his solo work. “room” is still an exquisite creation, but it’s not something that will unobtrusively loom in the background.
Random and emblematic: The sound of space
by Felicia Atkinson, Büşra Kayıkçı, Carmen Villain, Kuniyuki Takahashi, KMRU and more
Kamaru’s piece Stretch Mabati’ opens with warm saturated drones, scattered with field recordings and distant clangs of corrugated metal, all the while progressing and expanding outwards. As glitches flutter and intercept the composition, a blissful crescendo is reached, then steadily, the track simmers down, reducing to its core elements to finish.
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Narrating Environments” A Discussion between Lukasz Polowczyk and KMRU
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Recently the two artists had the opportunity for a brief chat, pondering the ethics of field recording, the importance of listening, and subliminal nature of familiar sounds.
Fact Mix 893: KMRU & Aho Ssan & Sevi Iko Dømochevsky
Artist Sevi Iko Dømochevsky visualises the kind of catastrophe that KMRU and Aho Ssan make audible in their Fact Mix, one that is painful to comprehend, yet serves as a prescient diagnosis of our present.
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Subbacultcha: An Interview with KMRU
KMRU listens to cohere with that what’s around. Sometimes as an observant with bare ears, sometimes as a collector, documenting what passes by. KMRU’s re-sculpted collages, big or small, brim with details, props and pieces of decor. They capture reveries of another time, and especially of another place. We spoke with the sound artist and musician about era’s in one life, liminality and slowing down. ‘
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curation:
V/A -INSHA / Nairobi Ableton User Group
PreOrder Vinyl
ACL 2022 ~ The Top 20 Albums of the Year
KMRU & Aho Ssan ~ Limen (Subtext)
There is nothing like the sublimity of watching a natural landscape transform at the scale of human time. The video for “Resurgence”, the first track of this album, depicts an erupting volcano hauntingly recreating its surroundings. It is a haunting experience simply because what is no longer there lingers, somewhere beneath our sight, as the lava redraws the landscape anew. The music follows suit: it flows, yet grinds, like molten stone; it bubbles with electronic noises and traces the air with hisses and compressed sounds; it fills whatever space you play it in with volume. It is the perfect combination of these two artists’ practices, in terms of ambient and abrasive electronics, an overwhelming and expansive set of pieces that expressionistically builds a listening cycle of creation and destruction. The limen is the border of perception, an idea that crosses the entire album as it grows these masses of sounds — like the lands around the volcano, the music shifts right at the edge of perception, and it is impossible to truly keep in place, to fully process in the moment it happens. It will hit you, after a while, and it will burden you with the weight of the earth as it suffers its demise. Such is the power of Limen. (David Murrieta Flores)
Ransom Note- Silence: A reflection on migration and sound with Emeka Ogboh & KMRU
Kenya-born sound artist KMRU and Nigerian sound artist Emeka Ogboh discuss their respective journeys.
They often say that we are a product of our environment – that our environment is what then influences our perspective, our interests, our sense of self and our creative outlook. However, what happens when that environment changes? What happens when we are emerged in a new environment with different social constructs, different sounds, different sights and different cultural ideologies? Emeka Ogboh and KMRU are both visionary artists based in the city of Berlin, both have worked tirelessly in fierce pursuit of endeavours and projects which challenge and deconstruct the boundaries and sensibilities of art’.
In this conversation the two reflect on the shock they experienced when experiencing the silence of the city for the first time; recount stories of their most powerful installations and the narrative of ‘experimental’ art in the context of African culture.
Boomkat Review: Epoch
Kenyan sound artist KMRU pushes off deep into Berlin skool ambient on a richly layered and empathetic suite on a return to Seil Records, site of his debut album.KMRU follows collaborations with Seefeel, Luke Slater/Speedy J, Echium and Aho Ssan for the likes of Editions Mego and Berghain’s A-Ton, with a bouquet of bittersweet synth meditations that return us to his most intimate side. Doing for ambient electronica what his fellow Kenyan artist Slikback did for techno, KMRU exerts an expressionist angle on the paradigm with a distinctive grasp of texture and tone mirroring aspects of 0PN or Emeralds’ capacity for evoking nostalgia and a sort of fraught sublime, allowing everything space in the mix to breath with an unhurried pace and subtly stressed tang that effortlessly enchants to his slant.
Now a resident in Berlin, KMRU implicitly echoes the spaced-out seduction of Conrad Schnitzler’s early work with Tangerine Dream and Kluster, and later works by Cluster or even Sun Electric, in his navigation of buttons, faders and wires. The silvery grayscale tone and warmth of ‘guise’ sets the mood for a drift between pastoral melodies and field recordings of in pieces’, thru the serenity of ‘luminous beings’ and OOBE-like sensation of ‘resonant sharing’, to his most bittersweet use of texture on the edge of noise with ‘In new fields’. From there the album takes on a more rhythmic impulse with results recalling Lali Puna in mood’, and even more eaze’s puckered suss in ‘other times’, thru to a heavenly airborne waltz titled just’.
The 50 Best Album Covers of 2022
40. KMRU & Aho Ssan, Limen
Limen is a fascinating collision of styles. Given Kenyan sound artist KMRU and French electronic musician Aho Ssan’s normally divergent approaches to minimalism – contemplative ambient and chaotically abrasive deconstructed club, respectively – you would expect the duo to try to find an effective middle ground. Yet what they describe as a seamless back-and-forth led the two artists to push themselves to new extremes, and the resulting album reaches the sort of gracefully volcanic intensity that its cover beautifully exudes. “For the cover of Limen we were looking for an image that mirrored and expressed the sense we had of our collaborative working process,” Joseph Kamaru told us. “The image, by Martin Rietze of Sumatra’s Sinabung erupting in 2014, expresses various materials and elements — stone, air, lightning, cloud, and pyroclastic flow — that are driven into synchronization by geologic forces as one dynamic process in which everything becomes a single organic and explosive moment, transcending its constituent elements.”
Kenyan Sound Artist KMRU’s New Album Emerges from a Desire to be Grounded
'epoch' LP is available now.
KMRU - epoch
Seil Records
For his follow-up to 2020's acclaimed Jar, Berlin-based Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru realized he needed to reflect on just how much had changed in two short years. Even aside from the obvious global disruptions, Kamaru's life had changed completely: a move to a new continent, a sequence of fresh creative projects (including work with Paris's Aho Ssan and Manchester's Echium) and tours with Big Thief and Fennesz inspired Kamaru to think a little differently about his creative expression.
Written in Spring 2022, epoch emerged from a desire to be grounded. Constant touring had left Kamaru with a desire to slow things down to sooth some of the emotional intensity of continual movement - something he'd never realized he had the strength to endure. It felt fulfilling for him to be back in Berlin for a while, so he channeled this energy into the technical challenge of getting to know a brand new synthesizer - the Sequential Prophet REV2 - that's responsible for the majority of the sounds on the album. Secluded in his home studio, Kamaru dubbed synth sounds on the fly using pedals, looping and layering, then filling out the tracks with field recordings captured while on tour in the USA.
It was effortless, he explains. The album finished itself. Kamaru had been listening obsessively to iconic American synth trio Emeralds which motivated him to explore pure synthesis: to build sounds from scratch and form his music in a more holistic, emotionally connected way. Grateful for the experiences he'd managed to have while traveling and meeting new people, epoch his way of unravelling these feelings in slow-motion. From the gently saturated opening notes on 'guise', there's a feeling of tenderness that's impossible to ignore. The faint rustle of human beings in the distance - laughing, talking - reminds us of the world outside, while deep, brassy harmonies sooth the soul.
Unlike Kamaru's explosive, noisy collaboration with Aho Ssan -Limen, epoch is an exercise in restraint and control. While he's influenced by the synth music canon, Kamaru uses these colors to paint his own unique landscape, broadcasting a story that's steeped in experience, movement, and careful observation. Tracks bleed into one another like dye in water, and the record takes on a dreamlike quality - explaining it is difficult, but feeling it is profound.
text: john twells
KMRU “mood” (Seil)
Kenyan producer KMRU rarely lets more than a few months go by without sharing new music—most of it excellent—but epoch is his first new solo album in quite some time. (It’s also currently available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.) Dealing heavily in gentle drones, soft melodies and elegant field recordings, the record should further solidify his position as one of ambient music’s most thoughtful and talented figures, and hits a particularly high note on “mood,” a song which impressively finds serenity amongst a pulsing tone (that honestly recalls an old-school busy signal) and what sounds like rustling paperclips.
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Burberry x KMRU
Festive Gifting campaign 2022
sync:
Track: Matching Teal Surfaces
Artist: KMRU
Selections: KMRU
In this series, Selections, we invite DJs, producers and label heads to dig into their digital crates and share the contents of their collections. This week, KMRU spotlights blissful synths, tactile guitars, streetscape sound design, indie rock and more.
RA unveils full details of limited-edition birthday book, Sacred Spaces
Bandcamp Navigator, November 2022
KMRU
Temporary Stored
The second track of Kenyan ambient artist KMRU’s latest album “MR1” starts off in a way that is similar to The Orb’s “Into the Fourth Dimension,” one of the more abstract pieces on The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. The elements are all there—looped samples of people speaking, field recordings, a mix that rushes from left to right in a way that is almost dizzying if you’re listening in headphones—but KMRU’s work slowly, subtly, begins to change this formula. Instead of staying low-key, floaty, and mesmerizing, it slowly adds more, louder sounds to the mix, causing one’s mind to have to do a little work to keep up. It’s, frankly, exhilarating in a way that ambient music, usually by intent, rarely achieves. That’s the theme for all of the tracks on this spectacular album. The elements of these songs—chants, rumbling synths, news reports, the occasional kalimba—all vie for center stage. Somehow, it’s never chaotic. KMRU is adept enough at his craft to ensure that the components of his work are never fighting each other for attention. Rather, they’re all boldly asserting themselves and working together to create a result greater than its parts—an album that is fresh, mysterious, and infinitely compelling.
BERLIN ATONAL X CYPRIEN GAILLARD PRESENT: A GREAT FALL, Palais de Tokyo.
For the exhibition HUMPTY DUMPTY, Cyprien Gaillard and Berlin Atonal make a new collaboration. Together they have invited a lineup of special artists to use the medium of the dub soundsystem as a way of transforming the entire museum space into a new kind of echo chamber for one night. The heterogeneous line-up brings together legendary experimental drum and bass pioneer Krust and Kenyan soundscape experimentalist KMRU, Rhythmic sorcerer Nkisi and Mellowdramatics from the London-based Black Obsidian Sound System.
KMRU - don't linger they might see you
An unsettling homage to the mysterious nature of dreams from the Berlin ambient music star.
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As KMRU, the Nairobi born, Berlin-based producer Joseph Kamaru has experimented with many different strains of ambient music. He's currently pursuing a masters degree in Sound Studies and Sonic Art, and it's not hard to pinpoint the impact that this academic approach to contemporary composition has on his work. Where the July LP Temporary Stored used field recordings to grapple with themes of colonialism, his new single, "don't linger they might see you," is more eerie and esoteric. Contrasting found sound samples with periods of quietude, it's inspired by the surreal realms we visit in our slumber. Over the course of 32 minutes, staticky field recordings underline subdued synth tones that morph from bassy drones to metallic, trebly pads. The sprawling piece evokes absorbing a scene in a horror movie without ever turning towards the screen.
Courtesy “Night Journeys III (KMRU Remix)” (Kulør)
DJs will undoubtedly reach for the high-octane reworks that populate much of Courtesy’s new Night Journeys Remixes EP. Those unconcerned with revving up the dancefloor, however, can luxuriate in KMRU’s spacious take on “Night Journeys III,” in which the Kenyan ambient specialist stretches the song’s reverberant guitar tones across a moonlit night sky, ultimately sounding something like a ’90s slowcore band playing on the surface of the moon.
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Visiting Artist KMRU at Un-Writing Nature
Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research
The Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR) is delighted to announce that Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU, will be a Visiting Artist at Un-Writing Nature II, an intensive research residency and workshop to be held at the historic Villa Pianciani, Spoleto, Italy, September 27 - October 4, 2022.
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MOS DEF, KMRU, MAKAYA MCCRAVEN, MORE FEATURE ON SOUNDTRACK FOR NEW NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY, CIVIL
Netflix has unveiled the soundtrack credits for its new documentary, 'Civil: Ben Crump'.
Among the artists whose music features on the film are Mos Def, KMRU – with two tracks from his 2020 album 'Jar' – Makaya McCraven, K-Ci & JoJo, and Bobby Womack.
The documentary itself focuses on the life and legacy of American civil right attorney Ben Crump, who has represented the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Black victims of police brutality in the US.
KMRU & Aho Ssan erupt in post-apocalyptic extremity with ‘Resurgence’
An explosive edit from Limen, the first collaborative project from Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru and French electronic composer and producer Niamké Désiré.
A tale of two Kamarus
Two musicians bore the name, Joseph Kamaru, a grandfather lost to time and a grandson in the midst of his destiny. Here’s the story of the Kenyan folk titan and his ambient composer grandson, what they share and the weight of legacy. Interview.
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Acid Test: April 2022
KMRU & Aho Ssan
Limen
Listening to Limen, the cataclysmic debut album from KMRU and Aho Ssan, is like watching something beautiful burn to the ground. Over recent years, both of these sound artists have released defining work while taking very different approaches. The Berlin-based Joseph “KMRU” Kamaru’s gorgeous ambient pieces typically begin as field recordings, often taken from his home in Kenya or around other regions of East Africa. Meanwhile, the Paris-based Aho Ssan (aka Niamké Désiré) is best known for building virtual instruments and dense Max/MSP constructions like 2020’s Simulacrum. On Limen, their approaches connect like a spark hitting dry brush, leaving hellfire in its wake.
The pair draw influence from the anime Akira (1988), and just as that classic film sets deep character dynamics against the sprawling backdrop of a global apocalypse, Limen’s three tracks maintain an intimate focus amidst an epic scale. Through body-shaking blasts of sub-bass, surges of electronic noise, and ghostly slivers of melody, opener “Resurgence” creates a storm of disorienting sound without ever letting you lose sight of its tragic, emotional pull. The brief, cathartic centerpiece “Rebirth” burns at the album’s core before setting up “Ruined Abstraction,” a sprawling 21-minute closer whose gentler sonics offer no respite—only images of embers, ruins, and ashes. An operatic voice appears in the final moments, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s there to offer a glimpse of hope, or simply an elegy. That answer may be left up to the listener, but the path Limen takes to even reach that question is a journey worth experiencing. It is one of the year’s most powerful albums.
KMRU and Aho Ssan Announce New Album Limen
Sound artists KMRU and Aho Ssan have announced the collaborative album Limen. The record is out April 29 via Subtext. Below, listen to a preview of the album’s first song “Resurgence.”
KMRU AND AHO SSAN COLLABORATE ON NEW ALBUM, 'LIMEN'
Titled 'Limen', the album takes in three tracks, one of which totals 21 minutes. It's the first studio collaboration from the two artists, following a previous live link-up at Berlin Atonal. KMRU has also remixed Ssan's tracks 'Outro'.
The album is said to be inspired by various global changes that occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and is on the noisier side compared to the respective artists' usual solo material. Ssan is quoted in the press materials as saying he's "never made something so extreme" as the 21-minute cut 'Ruined Abstractions'.
You can check out an excerpt of 'Resurgence', one of the album's three cuts, below. It will be released through James Ginzburg's Subtext label on 29th April.
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The LP is out April 29th via James Ginzburg's label, Subtext Recordings.
KMRU and Aho Ssan have linked up for an album on Subtext.Spanning three tracks, one of which clocks in at 21 minutes, Limen is the first studio collaboration from the two artists, following a performance at Berlin Atonal and a KMRU remix of Ssan's track "Outro." James Ginzburg's label will release the LP on April 29th.Inspired by global shifts during the pandemic, Limen is noisier and more intense than either artist's solo work, particularly KMRU's minimalist ambient. According to Ssan, he has "never made something so extreme" as the extended album cut "Ruined Abstractions."
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Limen : KMRU & Aho Ssan
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THE BEST DJ MIXES OF THE YEAR 2022 SO FAR
KMRU - DEKMANTEL PODCAST 378’
When your brain needs a break from the relentless chaos of the world, KMRU is a go-to artist for sounds that soothe and relax. The Kenyan artist’s mix for Dekmantel’s podcast series is a remarkably beautiful hour of music, cocooning you in a blissed-out haze of ambient textures.
Experimental sound artist KMRU is a master of quietness. His music is as much about empty space as it is the delicate field recordings that fill it in.
The Kenyan has been perfecting this balancing act from his base in Berlin, most notably on 2020 full-length Peel. It's a record of slowly unfolding synth beauty and drawn-out dr