We first stumbled upon Joseph Kamaru’s womb-like world while reading a rundown of the records that helped Patricia Wolf deal with her mother-in-law’s death.
“This song is a recent discovery for me,” she wrote of the revelatory KMRU single. “It resonates with the current place I am in with grief. It says to me, ‘Life is full of loss but you must shake yourself out of this suffering and live.'”
We feel the same way after hearing Peel: torn between the cold, hard realities of our current situation (indecisive politicians, resurgent crime rates, Trumped-up tribalism) and the distinctly human need to dig ourselves out of a self-imposed hole and get on with it already.
Much like William Basinski’s seminal Disintegration Loops series or a Buddha Machine with a mind of its own, Kamaru’s Editions Mego debut is deceptively simple and profoundly deep. Call it a ritual, with traces of everything from Tim Hecker to Rafael Anton Irisarri, and quite a few signs that the Nairobi-based composer is just getting started….
