KMRU - Kin

KMRU is a Kenyan artist now based in Berlin. On his second release for Editions Mego, he delivers an urbanized, continental record, far removed from the sweeter, more rarefied atmospheres of “Peel”, released in 2020 on the same label. The two works are closely linked, despite having little in common musically; the artist's personal experience, however, places their differences within a perspective of origin, journey and displacement, turning them into points on an ideal migratory route that begins at Kariokor in Nairobi and ends at Moabit in Berlin.

“Kin” in fact has distant origins, ideally already back in 2020, in conversations with Peter Rehberg aimed at producing a follow-up to “Peel”, and in the initial research work in field recording carried out in Kenya to find new sonorities capable of yielding different results while still keeping a spiritual bond with that album. An idea first set aside and then almost abandoned following Rehberg's untimely death in 2021, it was picked up again, reworked and reinvigorated the following year thanks to an artistic encounter with Christian Fennesz, with whom he embarked on a US tour and found a fruitful and inspired artistic rapport. The original material was then merged with more recent sonic structures, resulting in fresh and sophisticated outcomes.

Right from the opening track “With Trees Where We Can See”, one can already sense the great novelty compared to all of KMRU's previous work: feedback becomes a central element, its modulated, stretched-out sound now surfacing, now sinking amid the long, layered drones. The textures progress slowly, without exaggerated developments, naturally converging and blending into the surrounding resonances; they create a rich density that at times recalls that of “Venice”, where the sonic architecture is shaped by elegant feedback, carefully dosed and rippled by the rounded motion of the guitar.

This novelty is even more evident on the gem “Blurred”, composed and produced together with Christian Fennesz: a twelve-minute track in which light samples of field recordings and ghostly chords enrich with echoes, reverb and suggestion a liquid, malleable structure, agitated in a constant magmatic churn.

It's clear how the move to Berlin, and the displacement stemming from this new cultural (and sonic) reality, have given KMRU the tools needed to approach composition with more “mitteleuropean” methods (and moods).

If on “Peel” the dominant feeling was one of contemplating a certain fragile majesty, nocturnal and inward-looking, an ancestral secret whose mystery was to be renewed, on “Kin” the environment is more urban, human and brutal; the shadows are sharper and the lights more intense and artificial.

“They Are Here” depicts an alarmed consciousness that returns with even more frenzy on “We Are”, while “Maybe” plunges it into uncertainty. Here, the use of dark, underwater sounds pushes towards a dreamlike, sinister realm. The feedback grows harsher and more distant, passing into the background like a visual artifact, like a glow emerging from the indistinct only to sink back into it at once.

The long “By Absence” closes the record, with field recording once again taking centre stage, embodying a voice of nostalgia over the monochord base texture. Chirping, material impacts, rustlings and creaks rest lightly on a synthetic, cold, hypnotic timbre, pushing against a claustrophobic pulse, cracking its surface until it opens into a sweeter, more majestic pulsation. The samples are then left to float with aching lightness over the long reverbs and massive sonic drones which, swelling, swallow them up in a grand, heroic finale.

“Kin” is a refined, elegant, melancholy record, a chronicle of uprooting and disenchantment: the concrete skeleton of a brutal civilization within which a ghostly, foreign nature has woven ethereal thickets and new patterns.

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22/02/2026