Repatriated sound fragments are deeply embedded in the sonic practice of KRMU’s Temporary Stored I and II, Disconnect, and Natur. Twenty-seven-year-old Joseph Kamaru (known as KRMU to his musical audiences) embraces his unique artistic identity as an ambient sound artist and musician from Nairobi, Kenya, currently working in the city of Berlin. KMRU’s earlier albums and EPs dating back to 2017 began with electronic experimentation that typically spanned less than 10 minutes in duration. Early projects such as Euphoria (2017) and Noize (2017) dabble in the house genre style through techno-leaning synthetic sounds under the constraints of common time. From 2020, however, works such as Saal and Peel established KRMU as a longform musician, stretching the experimental prowess solidified in his earlier works into more extended ambient pieces of electronic art. Working with longform field recordings as a medium, KMRU’s specialty lies in the creation of distinctive soundscapes, blurring the lines between the natural and the electronic, and musicking his way beyond our ears into the imaginative unknown. As the composer and creator of more than 30 sonic projects and installations, KMRU has established himself as a front runner in ambient sonic experimentation, a major contributor alongside Emeka Ogboh and Menzi to the evolving worlds of African sound art. Temporary Stored I and II, Disconnect, and Natur are especially notable for their blending of his influences, surroundings, and listening experiences in both Nairobi and Berlin.

KMRU is a pioneer of interdisciplinary sonic experiments, encompassing writing, installations, sound design, and more. His musical tendencies expand beyond the world of traditional form music into the realm of composed soundscapes. Much of his work seeks to bridge between the natural, the synthetic, and his subjective orientation through both. Theoretically speaking, our perception of sound, as well as our attention to sonic detail, changes depending on our connection to surrounding objects and the environment in which they reside. Scholars such as Nina Eidsheim and Jennifer Lynn Stoever consider the influence of sound on our perception of reality—features that are explored through the audio lens of KMRU (Stoever Reference Stoever2016; Eidsheim Reference Eidsheim2019). Focusing on sound as a relationality to one’s environment, Eidsheim and Stoever highlight the racialised lens that an individual’s positioned perception of sound brings to the world at large. KMRU responds to Stoever in his academic writing, especially concerning her analysis of how listening practices comment deeply on the “scope of racial discernment, categorization, and resistance, [all] in the shadow of visual cultural dominance” (Kamaru Reference Kamaru2023). In response to Stoever’s work, KMRU proposes a Black listening approach that recognises his sound fragments and field recordings as dynamic culture bearers rather than static objects for Western entertainment (Kamaru Reference Kamaru2023). KMRU’s aim is, thus, to encapsulate his own relationality with the environment surrounding him through his extended compositions. As the subject of a 2021 documentary published by Ableton, he demonstrates the importance of listening to one’s surroundings (KMRU 2021). During an interview, the artist discusses his heavy usage of field recordings within his sonic pieces, and with the help of Ableton went on to release his field recordings under a Creative Commons license through the Ableton site. In the traditional sense, field recordings are often thought of as interviews or musical figures that are meant to be shelved for preservation, but KMRU’s work in manipulating such sounds reminds us that these recordings are very much alive.

In addition to his credentials as a sonic innovator, KMRU has invested an enormous amount of energy into the legitimisation of the sonic archive that remains independent of larger hegemonic power structures. One such project is the reissuing of the work of his maternal grandfather, the Kenyan benga musician Joseph Kamaru. A political activist during the era of Prime Minister and first President of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta and second President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, the elder Kamaru both praised and criticised the elite powers that be, never straying from his desire to fight for justice in the Kenyan government. Songs such as “Tiga Kuhenia Igoti” and “Ndari Ya Mwarimu” in the 1960s heavily influenced the Kenyan education system and political campaigns, reinforcing the power that music has on impacting regional, national, and even global politics (Iacobini de Fazio Reference Iacobini de Fazio2020). Following suit, grandson KMRU has taken on a parallel role to grandfather Kamaru, becoming not only a musician but an academic as well, fuelling his familial legacy in challenging the status quo that Western hegemonic structures created. Thus, KMRU’s mission to create a sonic archive of his grandfather’s sounds not only pays homage to Kamaru even in the afterlife but also creates a sonic thread from Kamaru’s politicised music to KMRU’s present-day composed arguments.

KMRU’s attraction to the sonic archive extends beyond his grandfather’s influence, as his 2022 project Temporary Stored (KMRU 2022) and 2024 project Temporary Stored II (KMRU 2024c) aim to reintroduce the shelved recordings of the sound archive at the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren (Belgium) back to the sonic environment whence they came.Footnote ¹ Focused on notions of repatriation, the Temporary Stored projects usher in a new mode of listening to the archive through experiencing various temporalities simultaneously. By combining past sound fragments with present soundscapes, KMRU establishes an original method of experiencing the future possibilities that the archive has to offer. Beginning with the audible crackling and fuzziness of the tapes, the tracks represent the haunting of both past and present. KMRU is repurposing the sound collections at the AfricaMuseum to create new possibilities encapsulated within his extended retelling of the archive. These sound fragments activate our eardrums and simultaneously echo beyond reality, allowing the listener to hear beyond the archived material that has remained mostly motionless. Whether it is the radio sounds of “MR0” or the eerie soundscape of “MR4,” KMRU aims to retell this story through narrative; his sonic envisioning reroutes the trajectory of coloniality by implementing this thorough decolonial strategy. Auditorily, we hear this retelling through the atmosphere of drones, an element initially perceived as static but one which enduringly becomes the most consistent and dynamic through-line. Aurally, we listen to the dialogue interspersed throughout the tracks, giving the project its weight as it expresses the vocality of lives past. Temporary Stored II only expands this sound world even further, as this latest album includes otherworldly tracks composed with his interlocutors Aho Ssan, Jessica Ekomane, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki, and Bhavisha Panchia. Each collaboration gives yet another opportunity to imagine beyond the sound fragments of the archives by combining KMRU’s sonic landscaping with the musicianship of his interlocutors. KMRU’s public description of Temporary Stored II on Bandcamp details further that his sonic expansion intends to interact significantly with the textual conversation of Katherine McKittrick. The author’s words inspire KMRU to refuse antiblackness as an institution through his art while simultaneously restoring our affirmative, Afrocentric imaginative futures (McKittrick Reference McKittrick2016). Through the usage of synthesisers, archival material, and field recordings, KMRU’s “re-appropriati[on] [of] the stolen sounds” through Temporary Stored I and II brings forth the lens of the emancipated (KMRU 2022).Footnote ²

The combination of field recordings and synthetic sounds culminate in KMRU’s Natur (KMRU 2024b) and Disconnect (KMRU 2024a). True to his embracing of the through-lines between his lived experience and the archived lived experiences of people recorded before him, Natur focuses on the other side of the spectrum by blending the natural with the technologically forward. Instead of focusing on the elements that divide the two, KMRU lets the two converge within his 62-minute extended piece. Natur, a longform composition, enters his own observed and imagined world of terrestrial soundscapes and extraterrestrial energy. KMRU’s usage of panning back and forth between the listener’s ears creates a specialised buzzing that, in a slip of auditory perception, morphs into static and back again. Much of this fluctuation captures the in-betweenness of the artist’s interconnected soundscape of his home in Nairobi versus his new, more muffled world in the city of Berlin. Oscillating between these two realms—one past and one anew—KMRU imagines a new musical possibility within the twilight zone.

This narrative-style storytelling is further drawn out in KMRU’s collaboration with KRM, or beat and noise-maker Kevin Richard Martin, on the album Disconnect. Released by the UK publishing label Phantom Limb, this collaborative album introduces a deconstruction of the concepts—and even ideations—behind the words “Differences” and “Arkives.” As the 41-minute piece moves from track to track, the words begin to strip away, moving from “Differences” (track 1) to “Difference” (track 3) to “Differ” (track 5) and simultaneously from “Arkives” (track 2) to “Ark” (track 4) to “Arcs” (track 6). The progression of the piece results in a subtle slippage of the English language into indecipherable sound reminiscent of Alvin Lucier’s “I’m Sitting in a Room” (1969); the audible remnants of “Differences” and “Arkives” slowly fall into the eerie soundscape of a sonic cacophony. Thus, in the case of both Natur and Disconnect, KMRU transports his audience beyond their ears into uncharted territory by bringing “a selection of sonic fragments out of dormancy, [and] channelling (in)audible traces into a contemporary cultural and political paradigm” (Rogatchevski Reference Rogatchevski2024).

Identified by both The Guardian and Pitchfork as one of the leading ambient artists today, KMRU continues to push the boundaries of reality through his soundscapes. Through his art, KMRU is allowing “us to visualize a concealed landscape, one that’s teeming with life and in dialogue with mechanization” (Wozencroft Reference Wozencroft2024). Turning sound fragments into rhythmic ornamentation, panning in drones that hold a frequency almost incomprehensible to the human ear, or creating ghastly remembrances of our past, KMRU’s artistry leads us into a new era of thinking beyond the colonial wall. In his ethereal recordings, he reminds us that we are not leaving the past but instead creating anew from its ashes. KMRU’s work also demonstrates the usage of software such as Ableton beyond the typical 3-minute synth-pop song and showcases the dynamic nature of his sonic practice as it has grown throughout his career. Ultimately, KMRU is showing his audience a fluid, decolonial practice that values the meaning of legacy and spirituality while simultaneously conceiving a brand-new informed ideation. Natur, Disconnect, and Temporary Stored I and II show us where we have been and where we could be.