KMRU: Dissolution Grip LP

The inaugural release on KMRU's own fledgling OFNOT imprint, Dissolution Grip is an ambitious project that emerged from his studies at Berlin's prestigious UDK. Guided by Jasmine Guffond at Berlin's Universität der Künste (better known as UDK), KMRU looked at waveforms -- the visual representation of sound itself -- and embarked on a process where he would write scores from the shapes, gradually turning the scores into raw synth sounds. Each sound is birthed from one of KMRU's field recordings, but none of those recordings are audible in their original form. The album's opening side "Till Hurricane Bisect" is a 15-minute epic that evolves at its own glacial pace, carefully transforming blustering wind sounds into gasping drones, glassy oscillations and choked distortion. Cosmic and meditative, it's a testament to KMRU's skill as a sound engineer and patience as a composer, combining the gentle world building of his acclaimed Editions Mego album Peel (EMEGO 289CD/LP, 2020) with the rumbling energy of Limen, last year's collaboration with Aho Ssan. On the title track, KMRU takes the opportunity to flex his orchestral muscle, conducting a cast of warbling synth tones into a durational symphony. Starting as quietly as a whisper, Dissolution Grip expands at its own pace until it's a dense wall of harmony, powerful but never completely overwhelming. It is music embedded with a rich sense of place that informs us of KMRU's past and present, and signals where his musical philosophy might take us in the future.