kmru

Available on Bandcamp to order on release date: 26th July 2024

Track Listing: [CD – 1 track – 52:38]
1. Natur – you can hear an extract here

All tracks written, mixed and produced by KMRU
Mastered by Simon Scott at SPS
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft

When KMRU relocated to Berlin from Nairobi, he was immediately fascinated by the German capital’s relative silence. Back home, he was surrounded by sound: the omnipresent churr of birds and insects, the chatter of passers-by, and the electrical smog belched out by criss-crossing power lines and roaring transformers. In Berlin, this noise was muzzled; pedestrians wandered the streets with headphones in, barely communicating, while electrical cables were hidden away underground, and wildlife retreated from the imposing, concrete jungle. KMRU compares this observation with his visual experiences. Acclimatizing to life in Western Europe, he realized that night, a dusky blue-black lit up by streetlights and shops, offered little contrast with day. Nighttime in Kenya felt more tangible, somehow. After 6PM, when the sun sets, even the dim glow of a screen can dazzle the eyes, which must quickly adapt to the conditions. And as anyone who’s closed their eyes while listening to music will know, the ears also adjust when visibility is impaired, enhancing even the tiniest sounds. So KMRU used this phenomenon to inform ‘Natur’, a billowing long-form narrative that blurs the audible spectrum with an imperceptible sonic universe, contrasting cacophonous electromagnetic soundscapes with more familiar and grounding natural sounds.

The piece was composed in 2022, and since then KMRU has made it a live staple, tweaking and reshaping it as he performed on tour with Fennesz, and with the London Contemporary Orchestra at Southbank Centre. “I became it,” he says. “I merged with it on a performance level.” The experience allowed KMRU to sculpt not only the album’s crucial dynamics, but its philosophy. Following up records like 2020’s acclaimed, field recording-rooted ‘Peel’ and last year’s synthetic, ethereal ‘Dissolution Grip’, KMRU makes a decisive step forward. ‘Natur’ is KMRU’s most uncompromising work to date, crackling to life from dense clouds of static and intimidating, dissonant drones. Using electromagnetic microphones, he uncloaks the commotion hidden by the digital era’s ambiguous stillness, juxtaposing roaring, mechanical growls with microscopic glitches and tranquil, electrical wails. When environmental recordings do appear, they’re used as transitions between the thickets of harsh noise; sometimes hard to identify, they subconsciously remind the listener that behind the wall of sound there’s a natural world in constant communication, continually adapting to the fluctuating ecosystem.

KMRU sees ‘Natur’ as a way to reconsider what technology actually is and how it changes our perception of reality. This can be abstract, or more basic – like wearing rubber soled shoes to walk on asphalt, or using a leaf to drink water in a swamp. “Nature is connected with technology, and we’re so connected with nature that we adapt,” he says. “It’s like being blind, but still seeing.” On ‘Natur’, KMRU allows us to visualize a concealed landscape, one that’s teeming with life and in dialog with mechanization.

Reviews:

The Wire (UK):

‘Natur’ consists of a single piece derived from Kamaru’s experiments with electromagnetic frequencies. Evoking the work of Christina Kubisch, the piece reflects on the voices hidden inside our urban infrastructure and electronic devices. Static noise gives way to unexpected harmonies, rattling bass and birdsong. “The whole album is based on this recording I did with an electromagnetic microphone. It’s an interesting project because I performed it live for 2 years,” he says. Kamaru met Touch’s Mike Harding when on tour with Fennesz in the US, back in 2022, but the process to get the composition ready took its time. I ask how it feels to arrive here, considering that pivotal train journey in Kenya and the influence of Chris Watson, as well as all the other artists who have contributed to the label’s legacy. “Touch is a ‘listening’ label….They took a whole year just listening to the record and I appreciate that. I feel like it’s the perfect place for this kind of work”. [Ilia Rogatchevksi, feature June ’24]

Igloo Magazine:

The listener is transported in a rolling ambient vastness connected to natural elements and morphed field recordings, for a breathing, lively and emotional embrace which progressively reaches a mesmerizing climax.

Kamaru and I must say probably the most stupendous successful story in the latest development of electronic ambient music. In less than five years Kamaru obtained high praises from major indie labels in the place (Editions Mego, Mute, Touch) reaching a position which makes him a dignified leading figure in intricate and intimate electronic music with a drone flavors.

I’ve rarely seen the reputation of a sound producer edified so quickly in the musical league. It would be definitely interesting to grab some infos from Kamaru himself to know more about his musical trajectory and to understand better what makes his production a strong asset for nowadays and future of adventurous electronic music with a dense chilling impulse. KMRU is a project which is quite inevitable for those who browse new materials and new sound signatures in the ambient (at large) galaxy. KMRU also collaborated with a handful of numerous experimental music and ambient artists, including Seefeel but also Abul Mogard (I actually discovered his music through this specific collaboration back in 2020 for the label Vaagner).

Soberly entitled Natur is welcomed by the emblematic Touch imprint for a beautifully conceived/packaged edition. Natur is built as one extended piece processed as an assemblage of micro-sounds, abstract noises, and sinuous sound waves intertwined with the sonic background. The general tendency makes it intellectually meditative but less accessible than his previous release Dissolution Grip (OFNOT, 2023). An almost fuzzy feeling rises at the surface, especially during the first 15 minutes of the album then the listener is transported in a rolling ambient vastness connected to natural elements and morphed field recordings, for a breathing, lively and emotional embrace which progressively reaches a mesmerizing climax. Micro noises are always rampant but without being that harsh. The ending almost offers a cerebral mantra-like and spaced-out reverbed ambience to connect with the cosmos and universe as a whole. A mysteriously rumbling, cryptical and ascetic musical journey to lift the spirit.

Natur is highly recommended to followers of Touch (notably with artists such as Jana Winderen for the dynamic communication between sound mapping / sound ecology with sonic sound spectralism) but it can also seduce lovers of contemporary minimalism with a radical droning edge such as Tony Conrad, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Kevin Drumm, and Ellen Fullman. [Philippe Blache]

Boomkat (UK):

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. When he was working on ‘Natur’ back in 2022, KMRU found himself hung up on the difference in noise between Berlin where he now lives, and Nairobi where he grew up. At home, he was in a wide open, chaotic landscape where whirring generators were swallowed into a din of natural sounds; in Germany meanwhile, it felt manicured – nature was hidden behind perfectly sculpted streets and tower blocks, as if sound had been internalised. He reflects this reality by exposing the invisible, using specialist microphones to record the electromagnetic din that’s constantly buzzing around all of us.  It’s a nicely paced, cautious journey, introducing the soundscape on the bone-rattling ‘Natur 1’ as a sequence of static-drenched, dissonant transmissions before adding a level of order on ‘Natur 2’. Here, his vision begins to take shape: clouds of white noise part to reveal silence, and the unsettling feedback squeals begin to form harmonies. But KMRU never dips into what might be described as ambience; his most full-on deployment to date, he uses the dynamic intensity of extreme noise to help characterize his theme, shocking us into a realization that we’re surrounded by constant electronic chatter. And after reaching an ear-numbing, bass-heavy crescendo, he pulls back a little on ‘Natur 3’, mixing subtle environmental sounds into the insectoid glitches and electrically-charged fizzes. Using flute-like synthesized dips and wails, KMRU creates a bizarre, sci-fi tinted atmosphere, using his unique perspective to step away from the genre’s fantasy orientalisation towards a prophetic inside-out view of a possible global future. It all comes to a head on the epic 20-minute closing track ‘Natur 5’; where birdsong has evolved into a cybernetic churr, into melancholy whines that slip and slide alongside powerful, punctuating bass thumps. He strips each sound for parts, pulling out the low end and letting the electriity buzz to the surface once again. It’s powerful material that works as a neat thematic companion piece to Christina Kubisch’s relatively sedate electromagnetic symphony ‘Stromsänger’.

and

When Joseph Kamaru moved from Kenya to Germany, the first thing he noticed was the silence. Nairobi was full of talking people, chirping birds, and chirruping insects, and buzzing electrical lines and transformers. In comparison, Berlin was dead quiet, especially at night. But this was a false silence; the electrical grid was there, but hidden underground; the people were there, but locked in their apartments; nature was there, but pushed to the outskirts of the city. These elements became the component parts of Natur, a 52-minute composition that explores the differences between Kamaru’s native and adopted cities. The overwhelming sonic signature of the album is the hum and static of electronics, usually unheard by the human ear, that KMRU sought out with electromagnetic microphones. Over the course of months of touring with this piece, Kamaru edited and re-edited these sheets of noise until he “became” the piece, in his words. The result is a perfectly calibrated symphony of electronic sound that moves seamlessly between ambient lulls and dramatic crescendos. But natural sounds hover in the interstices of the fuzz and the feedback, suggesting a different relationship between city and country: the urban environment is recast as a technology for keeping nature at bay, but whether in Nairobi or Berlin, technology eventually fails. [Matthew Blackwell]

a closer listen (USA):

Which city is louder: Nairobi or Berlin?  The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is Nairobi.  A relocation from one city to the other inspired KMRU to start thinking about the differences in his environments, such as the difference between wearing shoes and going shoeless, or the wide night sky over one location obscured by light pollution in the next.  Crucially for a recording artist, the two homes sounded different.  On Natur he seeks to capture the contrasts of dueling biophanies.

As the Touch imprint writes, Natur is “KMRU’s most uncompromising work to date.”  It’s certainly denser and more abrasive than the artist’s ambient works, although the single, fifty-two-minute track possesses segments of intense beauty and interiority.  Listeners will be hard-pressed to estimate which sources stem from which location, as the composition also includes electromagnetic frequencies and amplified technologies, often hidden even from those who use them.  The entire piece becomes a treatise on the natural and the unnatural, and the compromises one makes in order to enjoy the trappings of “modernity.”  When one has lived in multiple places, which noises sound the most like home?

As the piece begins, one hears creeping electronic tones, the 21st century already in motion, relentless and unstoppable.  Wires crisscross cities, bearing messages, power, connection.  One does not normally hear external drone apart from feedback, a sound quickly quenched should it appear in one’s household.  Yet one may also grow acclimated to such sounds, as most have done with their screens.  KMRU’s gift is to make such sounds musical, so that when they grow in volume and insistence, they become alluring rather than distracting.  One leans in to hear more; and just then, the sounds recess to reveal a bank of field recordings that may have been there all along.

The mind recalibrates, asking the old questions about paradise and parking lots.  Do we miss the sounds of nature (natur?), and what they represent?  Is the loss of visible stars a small price to pay? And on the other hand, how much is too much?  In some cities, non-stop construction guarantees that no day, short of a nuclear pulse, will sound placid.  Midway through the piece, flocks of birds become audible for the first time.  Will anyone feel nostalgia for the sound of birds in the wild, or have they become so integrated into the urban landscape that one forgets their global diversity? Some of their calls even sound electronic, a reminder that some species mimc even the sound of our phones.  A child cries in the electronic wilderness, seemingly unattended.  Or is it a saw?

By the time the composition edges into a slow, steady drone, it imitates the hum of a city ~ indeed all cities.  A mourning dove attempts to break through the drone and fails.  Would we rather have mourning doves or streaming services?  The answer is obvious.  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. [Richard Allen]

The Quietus (UK):

What does the modern world sound like? The question evokes numerous answers; blaring car speakers, engine motors, loud cellphone conversations, nightclub noise and the like. To the extent that KMRU incorporates surface-level sounds in his music, such as on 2020’s Peel, they tend to capture more intimate sounds and nature recordings. However, his latest album Natur captures this environment in a different sense, focusing on the hidden symphonies underlining the hustle and bustle of urban life.

The record opens with a dense sea of glitchy static, calling to mind the sorts of frequencies that can be harnessed when operating a shortwave radio near electrical appliances such as computers and mobile phones. While radio static has long been incorporated in experimental music, it is often used in a chance-determined context, notably by John Cage. In the context of Natur, the static has a clear narrative, speaking to the deeper sonic language pulsating through the networks of communication and transportation that make modern life possible.

When the static subsides and chirping nature recordings come into the foreground, the result feels less like a reprieve from the storm of noise and more like a stream emerging from its waters. The piece metamorphosizes into sticky, almost dublike sounds, building a palpable sense of tension along the way before settling into an ominous drone. The drone persists long enough that it shifts from simply setting the mood to taking on an almost psychoacoustic effect, which, like the usage of electromagnetic frequencies, calls attention to the wider sonic elements that can be understood through deeper listening. All the while, noisy static textures continue to weave around the music until, towards the end of the piece, they move to the foreground, overtaking everything else.

Much of the piece could be heard as an interrogation of nature and technology, far from an uncommon theme in experimental music. Naturstands out in that it is less about the conflict between the two and more about their mutual evolution. Nature and technology are not dueling forces to place against each other, but a continuum that needs to be reckoned with. This is not to say the music recognizes nature and technology as one and the same, or that there isn’t any tension between the different elements. Rather, KMRU seems to understand nature and technology as a duality comparable to music and noise. The two are inextricably linked, and their differences lie more in individual perception than anything else. The first step towards understanding their dualism is listening. [Levi Dayan]

Pitchfork (USA):

8.0/10

Every city has its own sound—literally. Beyond whatever music might get played there, every place on earth emits a set of frequencies that is completely unique. For Joseph Kamaru, these identities are as distinct as skylines. “Soundscapes reveal a lot about how people think and behave,” he recently told Resident Advisor. He notices them when he goes somewhere new and explores them in his music. Often, they make him think of his home city, Nairobi.

Kamaru moved to Berlin in 2020. Since then, he’s recorded over a dozen records that position him as a master of esoteric sound: a blend of ambient, drone, noise, and field recordings, defined by tactile sound design and an emotional palette that runs from haunting to serene. In 2022, he composed what would become As Nature, a live show inspired, as he put it in an email, by “the electromagnetic sounds and hidden noises in Nairobi that are so present that the inhabitants of the city become connected with them.” He played it again and again at experimental events across Europe, tweaking it until he formed an intense bond with the music. “I became it,” he says.

Natur, which arrives on the UK label Touch, is the album version of that performance. In its attempt to capture ineffable qualities of his home city, it is also a personal record. It is, like much of Kamaru’s music, subtly political as well, shifting the focus to an East African city in an art form dominated by Western bias. More than anything, though, it shows his unique way of hearing the world around him in extraordinary detail, and shaping those impressions into a surreal musical work.

A single, 52-minute piece, Natur bobs and weaves through crackling noise and balmy ambience. For Kamaru, the sound of Nairobi at night is all about electricity, from the hiss of open transformers to electrosmog—sounds inaudible to the naked ear but captured by Kamaru’s electromagnetic microphones—all set against a darkness deep enough to be broken by low-lit iPhone screens. In its calmer sections, Natur serves up whispers, birdsong, footfalls and muffled crowds, humid drones and barely-there melodic loops. In its more chaotic sections, frequencies wail, whoosh, and crash. Above all, they buzz. At times the album feels like a gallery of the countless distinct forms electrical buzzing can take.

Ambient as much of it is, the result is the opposite of background music. Natur is a voltaic odyssey, a ghost train rumbling, twisting and floating through this aural rendering of Nairobi at night. Kamaru has written about what he calls “activated listening,” a closely intentional form of listening that Natur demands of its listeners from its opening section, a swelling wave of electrical currents that crests just before it short-circuits. Perhaps because it took shape as a live performance, this is a dynamic, ever-evolving composition, one that moves through a sequence of scenes as distinct as they are abstract.

Take the passage about 15 minutes in, when a barrage of white-hot frequencies mercifully gives way to a haze of soothing, natural sounds. Kamaru follows this pattern for much of the record’s first half, swerving through a thicket of noise, then slipping, at just the right moment, into a stretch of relative serenity. After a while, the two modes blur together into something droning and hypnotic.

Every moment along this drifting path is bursting with vivid detail. Layered together or presented in turn, Kamaru’s sounds are carefully sculpted and lovingly displayed, artifacts of the invisible world his work explores. It’s usually hard to tell field recordings—presented as-is or embellished in the studio—apart from sounds entirely of his creation. Still, the record demonstrates something Kamaru senses more easily than the rest of us, which is the richness and drama of everyday sounds. Natur helps us hear what he hears. [Will Lynch]

Das Filter (Germany):

Joseph Kamaru ist ein Meister der Soundscapes. Mit „Natur“ thematisiert der Kenianer die vermeintliche Stille der Stadt.

Es geht um Perspektiven. Um Konzentration und das Abschweifen im Tunnel des Fokus. Mir ist das in den vergangene Tagen selbst immer wieder aufgefallen. Ich wohne in einer vergleichsweise ruhigen Straße mit für die Gegend minimalem Durchgangsverkehr. Die Läden öffnen spät, die morgendliche Stille wird nur selten unterbrochen. Die Müllabfuhr kommt gegen 6.30 Uhr, ganz egal welcher Dienstleister nun seine dicken LKWs durch die Straße manövriert. Danach wird es wieder still. Sogar das Management der poshen Privatschule nebenan hat es irgendwie geschafft, den SUV-Eltern zu verklickern, dass man sich nicht gegenseitig anhupen muss. Jetzt, in den Sommerferien, ist es noch stiller. Das verändert meine Wahrnehmung von Musik und Sound. Als Schreibtischarbeiter brauche ich eine Klangtapete, die präsent genug ist, um in meinem Gehirn anzukommen, darf aber gleichzeitig nicht stören, bzw. die Oberhand gewinnen, z.B. mit Beats oder Vocals. Stille, die keine Stille ist. Damit kennt sich KMRU aus. Dass er bislang noch nicht auf Touchveröffentlicht hat, ist eigentlich kaum vorstellbar.

Auf „Natur“ beschäftigt sich KMRU musikalisch mit den unterschiedlichen Wahrnehmungen der Nacht und ihrer Atmosphäre, bzw. den atmosphärischen Störungen, die die Zivilisation und ihre Errungenschaften über die vermeintlich stillen Stunden wirft – von Klang bis Licht. So zumindest meine Interpretation des etwas blumigen Pressetextes. Zum Glück spielt der tatsächliche Trigger für diese Kompositionen keine Rolle. Die fünf Stücke sind so dicht wie leer, so laut wie leise, so rauschig-noisig wie deep und emotional. KMRU schichtet die Drones und Field Recordings mit derartiger Verve, dass man sich nicht nur mit Hochgenuss darin verlieren kann und möchte, sondern sich parallel dazu die Pulsader ritzen möchte, um sich so viel elektromagnetische Strahlung wie nur irgend möglich in den Blutkreislauf zu pumpen. Das Kratzen des Digitalen, das Restgeräusch der Stromerzeugung, der Überspannungsschutz von Schaltkreisen: All dies kippt KMRU in seinen Rechner als Input. Das Output ist eine unberechenbare 360°-Attacke auf alle Sinne. Wenn Joseph Kamaru es mit den Aufnahmen seiner elektromagnetischen Mikrofone bitzeln lässt, klingt das wie ein Angriff der Killer-Ameisen – eine klangliche Abstraktion, die Oscar Salas Arbeit für Hitchcocks „Die Vögel“ wie Fahrstuhlmusik klingen lässt.

„Natur“ ist eine Bomberstaffel der Nullen und Einsen, etwas, was nur digital entstehen konnte als ultimativer Take des scheinbar ewig gültigen Mensch-Maschine-Spiels. Ein mutiger Abriss aller Ambient-Konventionen, aller Schönfärberei, aller instagrammierten Wohlfühl-Tipps. Und ist dabei doch so offen und einladend, dass der Stacheldraht am Eingang dieses sonischen Irrgartens nie zusticht. Würde man diese Musik an die Betonwände des Berliner Humboldt-Forums werfen – der Schloss-Nachbau würde in der Spree versinken. Würde man diese Musik auf die Ruine der NSA-Station auf dem Teufelsberg werfen – der Kalte Krieg würde wieder richtig kalt. Und würde man schließlich dieses Album morgens um zwei Uhr im öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk spielen, würde die schläfrige Besatzung des Schaltraums als Wächter:innen über die Frequenzen umschalten auf Radio Luxemburg.

Alles richtig gemacht, KMRU. Genau richtig.

Electronic Sound (UK):

Kenyan Ambient [! – ed.] artist KMRU is often described as someone who is basically strapped to his hand-held field recorder. On ‘Natur’, you’d be forgiven for thinking the gadget he’s wielding is a Geiger counter or a ‘Ghostbusters’ PKE meter, rumbling off the scale as he wanders towards unseen radiation or spirits. More than any of his previous works, ‘Natur’ rattles and buzzes with a sense of emerging uncanniness, as though his recorder has discovered some strange and concealed energy alongside the sounds.

Comprising one, elongated, almost hour-long soundscape, it crackles with constant electricity like the faulty wiring of a building seeping its prickly charge into a room. Between undulating static and buzz, KMRU drops intermittent patches of respite, clear birdsong and ambient climatic rumble, which provides a brief moment to process the newly exposed haunted sounds. If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, “who ya gonna call”? If you want to find the weird sonic traces of hidden ghosts, definitely KMRU. [ST]

Bandcamp (USA):

From an outsider’s perspective, Berlin’s music scene is synonymous with endless weekend ragers scored by hypnotic techno. But away from its hedonistic corners, the German capital is permeated by a sense of unlikely placidity, offsetting its hard partying spaces with historic parks and peaceful riverfronts. Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist KMRU’s latest is inspired by his adopted city’s stillness and consistency—especially compared to the exhausting thrum of his Kenyan hometown. Where his last album, a collaboration with The Bug’s Kevin Richard Martin, was disquieting and brash, 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.

Pitchfork (USA):

The Best Music of 2024 So Far

RIYL: Electromagnetic radiation; the whirring of a computer booting up; deep listening; Fennesz; attuning to the sonic underworld of the metropolis; the soundtrack to Blade Runner 2049; wireframe glasses; immersing yourself in the drama of everyday sounds.