Intonal Festival 2021: KMRU

Kenyan producer Joseph Kamaru performs an experimental session as part of the Swedish festival’s 2021 programme.

The second of this week’s performances from the 2021 edition of Malmö’s Intonal Festival comes from Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU, a experimental musician and sound artist from Kenya. Kamaru’s music makes extensive use of field recording techniques to create multi-layered, richly textured ambient compositions. Last year, he released three albums, including the outstanding Peel for Editions Mego.

Kamaru’s performance, which took place on June 18 at Malmö’s beautiful St. John’s Church, sees the artist make use of synth hardware and software on a set that contrasts delicate tones with rough, noisy textures. It makes for a suitable companion to Johanna Knutsson’s Intonal performance, which took place in the same venue.

Intonal has been one of Sweden’s most exciting music festivals since its first edition was held in 2015. Run by the team behind the city’s Inkonst venue, the festival typically combines club nights with one-off experimental performances in stunning locations across the city.

Despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the festival was able to return in physical form after a fallow year in 2020, with limited audiences allowed to attend a series of socially-distanced performances under local restrictions. “The point of a festival is to share experiences and emotions with friends and strangers alike; to form new bonds and memories with people that you never met before; to collectively partake in the making of something sublime,” the festival’s team writes. “This cannot be re-created digitally. Not in any form.”

Look out for more performances from Intonal 2021 through the week on Fact.