KMRU & Aho Ssan: Limen (digital, Subtext, April 2022)

Two new producers for me: KMRU is Joseph Kamaru, a Kenyan sound artist who has previously mostly ambient and drone based around field recordings, now living in Berlin; Aho Ssan is Niamké Désiré, a French electronic musician and soundtrack composer of Ivorian and Ghanaian descent. Together, they have made three long tracks of pulsing, throbbing, fuzzy, wonderful ambient/noise/soundscape stuff. It’s the sort of thing that groans and swells and thuds into your noggin in a way which is simultaneously unsettling and yet deeply satisfying. It’s just melodic enough to ground you, but its production is richly detailed and inventive enough to keep you constantly on your toes. It’s not like you’ve never heard anything like this before, but it’s been a long time since I’ve heard it done quite so well. There’s a thrilling bit in the first track, Resurgence, which threatens for a tantalizing moment to turn into techno before taking a big old left turn. And by the time that pure wordless vocal line comes in over the elegantly distressed layers of static and dirty electronic stabs and thumping slabs of bass in the dying moments of the final track, Ruined Abstractions, I’m just transported.

I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Electronic.