Nairobi-based KMRU (aka Joseph Kamaru) has joined up with Editions Mego to offer up a blend of electronics and Kenyan field recordings that is predominantly ambient. Contrasts run deep, as the colder-sounding electronic pads and drones blend with warmer, thicker textures, but the overall tone is stretched and slowed and minimised (with exceptions) into something both abstract and mesmeric.

Across six long pieces, totalling 76 minutes, a trusted format is followed. Different tones and notes are used, but each one is essentially a variant on the same velvety bed of fixed melody, with more organic elements sounding like they’re happening outside. “Well” is somewhat closer and tighter-sounding, while “Solace”, unsurprisingly from the title, feels more barren and melancholic, with a faintly breathing pulse under.

An exception to the generally minimalist tone is “Klang”, a much more room-filling arrangement with an endless feeling of building and waking that never seems to climax. It’s like an orchestra warming up, but an orchestra made of synths and city life, and it feels quite overwhelming after being lulled into the calm that preceded it. “Insubstantial” restores the calm after and offers the album’s most melodic loop pattern, albeit a faint one.

The title track is the last and longest piece, a slightly cleaner-sounding 23-minute slow progression around a two-chord pattern that pretty much sums up the whole release.

It’s not as adventurous or diverse as some might hope, nor does it have the ‘ethnic identity’ that Europeans or Americans might stereotypically expect from African music, but as a richly textured calm piece of ambient, it’s like a high quality quilt.