KMRU

Born in 1997 in Nairobi, Joseph Kamaru records under the name KMRU, creating music that sits between ambient, experimental electronic and compositions built from field recordings. The grandson of Kenyan musician Joseph Kamaru, KMRU first emerged in an East African context before broadening his trajectory with appearances at Nyege Nyege Festival in 2018 and CTM Festival in Berlin in 2019. His career then unfolded between Nairobi and Berlin, where he pursued studies in sound studies and sonic arts and maintained a regular presence on stages devoted to exploratory sonic forms. KMRU released Peel in 2020, an album constructed through a close dialogue between synthetic textures and recorded sounds, followed by Logue in 2021, Epoch in 2022, Dissolution Grip and Stupor in 2023, Natur in 2024 and Kin in 2026. From record to record he refines a spare compositional approach — drones, diffuse pads, silences and micro-variations — sometimes more abstract, sometimes more rooted in soundscapes. He has also collaborated with Aho Ssan on Limen (2022), Abul Mogard on Drawing Water (2023) and Kevin Richard Martin on Disconnect (2024), and produced a long-format remix around Seefeel for Warp in 2021.