Riga’s experimental music festival Skaņu Mežs 2026 will take place on October 9–10 at Hanzas Perons (16A Hanzas Street). There are changes in the previously announced program: composer and artist Charlemagne Palestine will not be able to attend the festival. However, his work “Karenina” will be performed by Oren Ambarchi & Daniel O’Sullivan. Meanwhile, there is a new addition to the program: Berlin-based Kenyan sound artist and musician KMRU. Two-day tickets can be purchased here; their price is 60 EUR. “Duo tickets” are also available for 50 + 50 EUR.
KMRU (KE/DE)
Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU, is a Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist whose work is grounded in the discourse of field recording, noise, and sound art. His work posits expanded listening cultures of sonic thoughts and sound practices, proposing outer auditory listenings beyond the norms. KMRU’s practice extends through creative compositions, installations, and performances and has earned international acclaim through his performances in far-flung locales such as the Barbican, Berlin Atonal, CTM Festival, Big Ears, Le Guess Who?, PRÉSENCES électronique, and DarkMofo, and through sound works exhibited at Ars Electronica, Art Gallery of NSW, Sharjah, and the Venice Architecture Biennale, among other notables.
His extensive discography spans labels such as Editions Mego, Touch, Subtext, Seil Records, and his own imprint OFNOT. His releases have received widespread critical acclaim: the 2020 Editions Mego classic album “Peel” was named as part of Pitchfork’s “100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far,” and The Guardian (2022) noted him as ”one of the leading ambient artists working today,” while Bandcamp described him as “one of the most prolific and innovative artists in his field.” Over the past five years, KMRU has released numerous collaborative works, including “Limen” with Aho Ssan (Subtext, 2022), “Disconnect” with Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug) (Phantom Limb, 2024), and has formed a duo project A|||oy with Elvin Brandhi, which premiered at Berlin Atonal 2023.
In 2025, KMRU composed the score for “Totality”, premiering at the Uppsala Short Film Festival, and continued his long-term research into mangrove ecologies, presenting installations in Lamu (Kenya), Basel, and at the Venice Architecture Biennale with Oceanic Refraction Installation. His work was also exhibited at the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (MEG) as part of “Afrosonica” and at Kunsthalle Charlottenburg for “The Museum of Sound”. The same year, he released “Heavy Combination”, an acclaimed archival compilation of his grandfather’s (Joseph Kamaru) music, on Disciples, and served as a jury member for the ZKM Giga-Hertz Award.
In 2026, KMRU presented “Kin”, his follow-up album on Editions Mego, alongside a new solo exhibition in Düsseldorf as part of IMAI / Kunsthalle’s “Circulating Copies.”
Just as with Gudrun Gut, KMRU appears at Skaņu Mežs 2026 as part of a special peek into the experimental music of Berlin – this part of the program is created in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Riga.
Oren Ambarchi & Daniel O’Sullivan play Charlemagne Palestine’s “Karenina” (AU/UK)
Charlemagne Palestine will not be able to perform at Skaņu Mežs due to personal reasons, so the initial trio now becomes a duo with the same composition still at its focus.
In the absence of Charlemagne Palestine, Oren Ambarchi and Daniel O’Sullivan present a special duo rendering of Palestine’s “KKAARREENNIINNAA.”
Originally recorded in 1997 at Galerie Donguy in Paris and released on David Tibet’s Durtro label, “Karenina” is a cornerstone of Palestine’s continuous music canon. Composed for harmonium and voice, it draws on the meditative unfolding of Hindustani raga, the intensity of cantorial chant, and Palestine’s singular approach to sustained, immersive sound.
In this iteration, Ambarchi and O’Sullivan honour the spirit of the original while reimagining its form through guitar, viola, electronics, and layered harmonic textures. Stripping the work to a focused duo invites a different kind of listening, intimate, spacious, and dynamically responsive, while preserving its devotional core.
This performance offers a rare opportunity to encounter “Karenina” as a living work: evolving, adaptive, and resonant beyond its original incarnation.
Daniel O’Sullivan is a London‑based composer, multi‑instrumentalist, and producer whose work spans experimental rock, avant‑garde composition, ambient electronics, and modern psychedelic forms. A core member or collaborator in influential groups such as Ulver, Sunn O))), Grumbling Fur, Æthenor, Guapo, Miracle, and This Is Not This Heat, he has also built a rich solo catalogue exploring everything from neo‑classical textures to hallucinatory synth‑pop.
Oren Ambarchi is an Australian composer, guitarist, percussionist, and prolific collaborator whose work moves fluidly between experimental electronics, free improvisation, minimalism, and abstracted rock forms. Known for transforming the electric guitar into a source of pure texture and signal, he has released dozens of solo and collaborative albums across labels such as Touch, Editions Mego, Drag City, Southern Lord, and his own Black Truffle imprint, which he has run since 2009.
The festival is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Goethe-Institut Riga, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and Valmiermuižas Alus.
Skaņu Mežs is part of the sound art project tekhnē, supported by the European Union and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia. The festival is also part of the NERDS network, co-funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture.
Media partners include The Quietus, TVNET, Satori.lv, Radio NABA, Arterritory, magazine “Mūzikas Saule”, and la.lv.
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