Berlin is a quiet city, especially in the depths of winter, and the residential neighborhood of Moabit, ringed by waterways, is especially tranquil. Yet when I call up Joseph Kamaru in his apartment there on a recent Saturday morning, he has been awake since 5 a.m., thanks to a singer practicing in a nearby flat. Germans are notoriously testy about noise—it’s illegal to toss glass bottles into the recycling container on Sunday, lest the shattering glass disturb someone’s day of rest—and the vocal exercises had elicited a chorus of outrage throughout the apartment block, the neighbors’ stern barks blending with the singer’s scales and bouncing off the courtyard’s brick walls.
“I wanted to record it but I was so sleepy,” says the 24-year-old musician better known as KMRU, who has been living in the German capital since October, when he enrolled in a graduate program for Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Universität der Künste. Unable to muster the energy to find his recorder, he flopped over and tried to return to sleep amid the cacophony of an early-morning civic breakdown.
It would have been an uncharacteristically noisy recording for Kamaru. For the past few years, he has been working the sounds of his surroundings into meditative ambient music. He captures sonic snapshots with his handheld recorder and then collages the pieces into lengthy drones where the real-world reference points dissolve into a haze. His early, more upbeat work dates back to the mid-2010s, but his 2020 album Peel marked a clear breakthrough. Imbuing supersaturated tone colors with the depth of a Rothko painting, Kamaru exerts a powerful pull; his tracks—some 13, 15, even 23 minutes long—are obsidian-colored lakes that beckon the listener to sink into their lightless depths.
For many, Peel came along at precisely the right time: July 2020, as the initial shock of quarantine was turning to monotony. The music’s contradictory character—seemingly static on the surface, yet harboring a wealth of detail once your ears become attuned to it—proved uncannily suited for the doldrums of the pandemic. It’s a lockdown record through and through: Kamaru recorded it in early April last year, shortly after returning to Nairobi from a workshop in Montreal and seeing his plans for 2020—his job teaching guitar, an appearance at Ableton Loop Summit followed by a short European tour, his annual return to Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Festival—fall like dominoes.
Using street sounds from near his home in Nairobi, along with nature recordings from Lunkulu, an island in Uganda, and background ambiance from Montreal, he recorded the album across two days of improvisations, seated at his laptop, slowly turning knobs to stretch his samples into unrecognizable shapes. He sent it to three labels; only Editions Mego, a Viennese experimental imprint, got back to him. Label founder Peter Rehberg was stuck in Berlin for the first phase of lockdown, with little to do but go through demo emails. “Peel became my soundtrack during those weeks,” he says. Like a homeopathic treatment, its curious sense of suspended time seemed to ameliorate the unchanging days.
The first time Kamaru really thought about the sounds around him was when they suddenly fell silent. Growing up near the city center in Nairobi’s Kariokor Flats housing development, Kamaru was accustomed to noise. His family lived near a busy thoroughfare traversed by matatus—fleets of brightly decorated buses that deploy massive sound systems to compete for passengers, blasting Kenyan and American rap and pop at ear-splitting volume. “The most pimped-out bus that plays the loudest music is the one people want to ride,” Kamaru says. From the age of 7 or 8, he and his older brother would ride the matatus to and from school, shouting over the din. Then, as a teenager, his family moved outside the city. It was upon noticing the novel sound of birdsong that he realized how loud Nairobi had been. Gradually, he began to find new details in the stillness.
Kamaru hails from a musical lineage: His maternal grandfather, also named Joseph Kamaru, was a titan of Kenyan benga and gospel, famous for songs that challenged the political establishment. (The younger Kamaru has been reissuing the elder’s music on Bandcamp in the last couple of years; the ultimate goal is to establish a formal archive, perhaps a museum.) Growing up, his name left him little room to hide—all his teachers were aware of his grandfather. “I couldn’t skip class,” he says with a laugh. “Since he died, in 2018, there’s a burden that fell out of nowhere: ‘Kamaru, now it’s your time.’”
Though he grew up singing in the choir and playing guitar, it wasn’t until he started making music on the computer that Kamaru found his own path. In high school, he realized that the school’s computers came equipped with the digital audio workstation FL Studio. The only problem: None of the teachers knew how to use it. So Kamaru and a few of his classmates taught themselves. “There were three of us in my class who were into production, and we’d lock ourselves into the computer lab at night,” he recalls. With the help of another classmate, he learned Ableton Live; they finished a song together, a lilting tropical-house tune called “Feeling,” and even got it signed to a German label, Black Lemon, kicking off a stretch of releases informed by progressive house and Afro house. One early track was included on a compilation from deadmau5’s Mau5trap label, making KMRU probably the only artist to have both Skrillex and Sunn O))) as label mates.
Back in his bedroom, Kamaru, obsessed, rarely left his keyboard. “My mom used to come into my room at 3 a.m. and I’d be in my headphones,” he recalls. “Sometimes she would bring me tea.” One night, she prayed for him. “I was so grateful,” he says. “My folks supported me all the way through.” In fact, it was his father, an economist, who convinced him to focus on his music: With his blessing, Kamaru deferred enrollment at a computer science program in South Africa in order to pursue a degree in music technology at Kenyatta University.
A turning point came in 2017, on an 18-hour train ride from Nairobi to the coast. Along with a group of young artists from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and the DRC, Kamaru was a participant in the East Africa Soul Train, an artistic residency designed to foster collaboration and forge networks across the continent. The artists were tasked with creating a project during the voyage, then presenting it to the group upon reaching their destination. The trip was fascinating—and hot. “It’s not a nice train,” Kamaru recalls. “It’s very old and slow and noisy.” Eager to translate the surreal, sweltering atmosphere into music, he found himself entranced by the train’s clattering rhythms. Digging his iPod out of his bag, he realized he could record directly to it; using headphones in lieu of a microphone, he captured its soundtrack—steam whistle, bells, voices—and used those sounds as the building blocks for three songs that would become his EAST EP.
It was only upon returning home that Kamaru encountered field recordist Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma, an impressionistic portrait of a rail line across Mexico, and discovered that there was an entire discipline around environmental sound. He delved into the work of experimental musicians like William Basinski and Katie Gately and purchased a Zoom recorder with built-in mics, a considerable step up in quality from his old iPod. “Recording outside, with my headphones on, I realized there was so much sound around me,” he says. “I was carrying it everywhere, listening and recording, using the microphones as a new pair of ears.”
Another turning point arrived when Kamaru discovered Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Festival—first as an attendee, then, starting in 2018, as a performer. The festival, which brings together electronic and experimental musicians from across Africa, was a crucial chance for Kamaru to meet others who shared his interests. “Making ambient music in Nairobi was weird for most people,” he says. He recalls being starstruck meeting the producer Slikback. “Just knowing there’s another person who’s doing something different in Nairobi was motivating.”
Slikback felt similarly. He had discovered KMRU’s music online that year, on the hunt for like-minded Kenyan artists, and was impressed with his melodic sensibility. “I’m in love with where he has taken his music now,” he says. “His ambient pieces capture beautiful, complex emotions.”
Back in Nairobi, eager to foster a sense of community, Kamaru established a series of Ableton workshops, where beginners could learn their way around the software. Then, in 2019, he traveled to Berlin to perform at CTM, an experimental music festival. It was his first time in Europe, and it was revelatory. Performing alongside artists like Actress, Eartheater, Yves Tumor, and Lucy Railton confirmed “that I was where I am supposed to be, sonically,” he says. “Having this affirmation that you’re not doing this on your own—that was motivation to keep going. Because in Nairobi there was this question: Who is listening to my music? That’s one reason I decided to do these Ableton workshops, to share the knowledge and create this space where people can know that they’re not alone. It’s hard for a musician to make a living from their art in Nairobi.”
The transition to Berlin hasn’t been easy, he admits. He started out couch-surfing at friends’ houses in the fall. All his gear was held up in customs. And the pandemic made things even more difficult: Before the winter holidays, he attended only one class in person; everything else has been online.
“It’s hard to be in a creative headspace in Berlin,” he says. “The flow is different than in Nairobi. I’m busy with school and trying to find time for my work. But last week I made this piece at night, and it’s the first time here that I felt like I’d made something where I gave it my all.” Soon enough, the piece makes its way to KMRU’s Bandcamp. “Falling Dreams,” a mournful, one-take guitar improvisation, might be his most expressive work yet.
Though he’s still pushing through his creative block, Kamaru continues to expand his sound. In addition to the more experimental sketches he posts to Bandcamp, next month he’ll release Logue, a collection of some of the more melodic, self-released work that pre-dated Peel, mixing birdsong and running water with idyllic synthesizer melodies. And before coming to Berlin, he released opaquer, a moody set of ambient etudes, and quickly followed it up with the pastel chimes of Jar. Together, they underscore how rapidly Kamaru’s work has developed over the past few years. “People want to know what album I’ll make after Peel,” he says. He doesn’t know yet, but he thinks it will be “completely different.” He’s aware that his music can be a little all over the map. “I want it to stay that way.”
Surprisingly, Kamaru hasn’t taken his recorder out much since arriving in Berlin. “It’s so silent here,” he says. “The other day I heard trees being cut, and it reminded me of the upcountry in Nairobi. I miss the sound of Nairobi. There’s so much to process, and then you can filter out what you want to listen to.”
Joseph Kamaru: I have this class in listening. I had an exam where I had to describe the soundscape and the keynote. A keynote is a sound that is inherent to the space. Here in Berlin, I’d say that’s the siren. I’m getting more attuned to it because every few minutes there’s a siren. At some point, I started thinking—why are there siren sounds all the time?
I’ve been hearing more bird sounds since it’s getting sunnier. In Nairobi, at six in the evening, there was this bird that was always singing. And now here’s this bird that started singing last week. I’m staying in this big block, this huge space where sound bounces off the walls. And I thought, Wow, this is beautiful. I recorded it. I relate it with the bird I listened to in Nairobi. It’s a connection between distant places.
My friend from Berlin was in Nairobi and she wanted to buy fabric. There’s this town called Eastleigh with a Sunday market that I wanted to visit and collect sounds. I remember this guy coming up to me—he asked me if my recorder was a bomb. Then I gave him my headphones to listen to and he was wowed. He wanted to go everywhere and listen to the sound.
I did an interesting project in 2018 in Kibera. It’s the hugest urban slum in Africa. People don’t go to this place because they think it’s unsafe. I was doing a film project with a friend, collecting sounds. We were walking in different shops with my recorder, and some people would refuse to let me record the sounds of the place. We would insist: It’s only the sound! We’re not taking pictures of you. It’s interesting. Why wouldn’t you want me to record you when you’re sewing clothes? I just wanted this sewing sound. But some people were excited—they want the sounds of the place to be heard.
When I was 12 or 14, when I introduced myself, people would ask, “Are you related to Joseph Kamaru?” I knew my grandfather was a famous musician, but it became clear that he was somebody I needed to know more. I didn’t understand his music then, because I grew up in the city and would speak in Swahili or English with my parents, but they were speaking with him in Kikuyu. I understand it, but my speaking is a bit shaky, and my grandfather’s lyrics were so deep that I had to ask my mom what the song means because he was very metaphorical.
In 2017, I went to Uganda for the first time for a different festival, Jinja Encounters. I was just writing to festivals and telling them, “I can play music now.” They told me they didn’t have any more slots, but they’d give me a free ticket. So I just booked the bus and told my dad, “I’m going to Uganda.” It was my first time traveling alone. I went back that September to attend Nyege Nyege. My friend George [Zontor] was performing and said, “Kamaru, just carry your laptop, we’ll DJ together.” We played—it was my first time playing in front of maybe more than 200 people. And since then, every year I have to go to Nyege Nyege. There are so many artists from different parts of the continent playing the weirdest music ever. Something good is happening on every stage, you don’t know where you should be.
I think that’s just how I am personally—I’m very calm and still and introverted. I just share how I feel through my sound pieces. When I was playing techno or DJing, there was a point where I just wanted people to listen to how I was feeling with sounds. But it was hard because people didn’t want to listen. They wanted to dance. That’s good, I enjoy dancing, too. But I’m trying to invoke this listening situation. For me, the best way to do that is with field recordings. An artist who uses his voice as the main instrument, you’re listening to the lyrics. But with field recordings, you’re listening to the surroundings. There’s so much to learn and understand from our surroundings with these sounds. You need to listen.
