Review: KMRU’s Logue Highlights Humanity’s Symbiotic Relationship to Nature

Comprising both new recordings and tracks released on Bandcamp over the last few years, Nairobi-based musician Joseph Kamaru’s Logue synthesizes field recordings with ambient electronic flourishes—a blend of African and Western influences that highlights humanity’s fundamental relationship to nature. Kamaru’s affinity for spacious compositions a la minimalist classics such as Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports and William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops is apparent throughout, including the opening track, “Argon,” which integrates gossamer drones, delicate flute tones, and synthy textures that conjure waterflow. Gradually, Kamaru introduces trebly and melodic punctuations that rise and ebb throughout, suggestive of a savannah prior to the arrival of a monsoon.

The album’s next track, “Jinga Encounters,” opens with trilling mandolins before shifting into a series of transient flourishes mixed with percussive sounds that are less rhythmic and more accentual. On “OT,” Kamaru similarly fuses loosely rhythmic and buoyant melodic elements that conjure open vistas, along with samples of infectious laughter and people in conversation, pointing to the interconnections between humanity and landscape. This theme is reiterated on “Und,” which features the sounds of water gushing and bird songs, balancing the track’s environmental elements with a delicate piano part.

With “11,” Kamaru juxtaposes tribal percussion and electronic beats. The synths wax and wane as the piece gains in compositional complexity, the percussive sounds growing less metronomic and more sparsely melodic. The synths become less variated as the piece fades out with the sound of faint bird songs in the background. The closing track, “Points,” opens with an airy sparseness before, again, transitioning toward a layered and intricate conclusion. In this way, the album ends with an audial metaphor regarding life’s proliferative nature and how diversification is integral to the evolutionary process.

With Logue, Kamaru seamlessly blends the digital explorations of Western ambient tradition with the music native to his homeland. By commingling electronically generated beats and distinct field sounds, including human voices and natural elements, he points to the interdependence of all life. Ultimately, the album illustrates how the micro and macro are equally sublime, each thing part of a greater whole, inseparable from its context.