Consumer Guide Album

Joseph Kamaru: Heavy Combination 1996-2007 [Disciples, 2025]
This compilation by a Kenyan musical hero—who died in 2018 pretty much unknown internationally—never evokes, say, the sustained, undeniable, utopian flight best epitomized by the very much multi-artist Guitar Paradise of East Africa. An ambient artist who worked mostly by collaging taped soundscapes together, Kamaru's rhythms tend choppier. But in their own way or ways they're variable as well as catchier while at the same time bearing what soon evolves into a rather distinct individual identity. Assembled by a grandson known professionally as KMR, these tracks have plenty of rhythmic and hence sonic variety that tends to morph into a single musical identity: his own brand or brands of Afropop. When one is done, the next one will be a little different. But pretty much inescapably, it will also be Kamaru's. A−