Earlier this week, I decided to reconvene with King Midas Sound’s Solitude. Kevin Martin’s misty drones roll out from the speakers like a thick blanket of fog, while Roger Robinson’s vocals–molasses-like and riddled with nicotine and whiskey–follow closely behind. Robinson’s harrowing tales of loss and finding ways to navigate through the world as one cut through as sharp as they did back when Solitude was released in 2019.
It was one of year’s pivotal albums, but one too heavy to encounter on a regular basis. Before its release, having suffered my own personal trauma, Solitude was something deeply relatable. An emotional crutch frozen in time. Re-engaging with its majesty, and consider the embers once again stirred.
It’s fitting, given Martin recaptures some of that dread on Disconnect, but this time alongside another, equally vital source: Joseph Kamaru (better known to us as KMRU). Martin’s alliance with the Nairobi-borne Berlin-based experimentalist doesn’t directly draw a line to the horrors of Robinson’s missives, but it certainly occupies the same orbit. Here, Martin and Kamaru cultivate the sorrow in more abstract ways. Despair purely through sound, making it open-ended. Really, it can be anything you want it to be.
Broken down into the three parts, via the track titles and their durations alone, Disconnect is like a slow decay. One that mirrors our current society.
With the longest tracks the album in Differences and Arkives, Martin and Kamaru come in heavy. Both tracks showcasing a kind of slow-motion drone that is like cigarette smoke forming the ghosts you’ve spent years trying to escape from. Sonic anguish, and it contaminates the walls like black mould. Kamaru’s vocals, a mix of spoken word and wordless vocalisations forming a brutal hypnotic meditation of sound.
KRM & KMRU - DisconnectThe grainy crackle of Difference is like a cigarette burning, and Martin and Kamaru use its faint light to fumble their way to the darkest corners of the vortex. Once there, they turn up the pressure on Ark; an ominous dreadscapes that echoes the sound and image of a creature hunting down its quarry (think of the sandworms in Dune).
On Differ the pair take the vestiges of dub and dance hall and shove it through the lens of psychedelia. The result is something from a different planet, and the same could be said of closing cut, Arcs. A blustery, chant-like fearscape that adds another dimension of misery.
While one can choose their own path with Disconnect, essentially it leads to the same destination. A fractured world and one that is exactly what the album title suggests. One where technology has dismantled the physical aspects of communication. One where capitalism and misinformation has created an unimaginable chasm. Friendships tarnished and families divided with differences unresolved. Disconnect. Even in the aftermath of lockdowns and the COVID pandemic where we’ve had to relearn our ways to interact; some people still haven’t, while others have changed because of it, and not for the better.
What Martin and Kamaru have achieved with Disconnect is a dystopian soundtrack fit for these times. Whether it be in collaboration, under his own name or spearheading The Bug, Martin’s greatest skill is to frame these moments in our history: perhaps there’s no better exponent. This time with the anchor of Kamaru and his delicate tinkering and less-is-more approach, on Disconnect the pair underline the malaise as accurately as any other artist in 2024.
Disconnect is out via Phantom Limb. Purchase from Bandcamp.
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