Electronic musician and sound artist Josep Kamaru, aka KMRU, takes us on our first December sonic journey.

Born in Nairobi and currently based in Berlin, KMRU is a sound artist and producer whose methods include field recording, improvisation, noise, machine learning, radio art and drones. With a paramount sound and visual sensibility, his work is reminiscent of ambient masters such as Lawrence English. KMRU’s sound though is uniquely positioned between the rarely-married cultures of ambient and African music, entwining his compositions with field recordings from his native Kenya and the surrounding countries of East Africa.

Self-releasing his productions, these have been received very enthusiastically by both critics and the audience. In 2020, he released three albums that showed the depth and range of his sound: Peel, an LP of hypnotic drones on the avant-garde institution Editions Mego; Opaquer, a collection of vivid and dreamlike sound sculptures; and Jar, a dreamlike cassette of found sounds and analogue ambience. KMRU hasn’t stopped in 2021 with a few more releases including Logue, an album Formed of tracks written from 2017 to 2019, which represents an artist not only in command of his form but also willing to develop and evolve, ready to deconstruct and radically refocus his music to explore new contours of experimental and ambient sound design.

This mix he shares is a liminal narrative of falling asleep, each track feels like an episode of a hypnagogic state. I’ve been thinking deeply about dreams and nostalgia this past week and these tracks evoke this feeling.

Tracklist:

Patricia Wolf - Morning Light

KMRU & Nyokabi Kariuki – unreleased

Fields We Found – Drops

Alexandra Spence - Suddenly Silent

Perila & Ulla - every something is an echo of nothing

Kevin Richard Martin - In Slow Motion

Klara Lewis & Peder Mannerfelt - Styrofoam Tone

Pita - Two Top Five

Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin - Uptown Psychedelia

Aho Ssan - Outro (KMRU Remix)

Tashi Wada - March 2007

MIGUEL ANGEL TOLOSA - salon 09-02

loscil – Vespera

The Transcendence Orchestra - Weather Series

John Hassel -Hex

Sarah Davachi - Border of Mind