PRESS RELEASE: Nyokabi Kariũki returns with debut album FEELING BODY due out March 3rd

Nyokabi Kariũki (she/her) is a Kenyan composer and sound artist based between Kenya and the United States. Her sonic imagination is ever-evolving, spanning across genres from classical contemporary and experimental-electronic music, to sound art, pop, film, and (East) African musical traditions. Today she announces debut full length album FEELING BODY, due out on March 3rd via New York’s cmntx records. The announcement comes with the release of her new single 'Nazama'. 

FEELING BODY, a collection of songs inspired by Kariũki’s experience of living with long-COVID for a large part of 2021, follows on from her 2022 debut EP, ‘peace places: kenyan memories’ (SA Recordings). The EP received wide-spread acclaim, being described as “deft” (The Quietus) and “transcendent” (The Guardian), with Bandcamp highlighting her as “becoming a crucial voice in contemporary composition and experimental music.” 

Kariũki marks January 2022 as the end of her long-COVID, although there are some persistent after effects, both physical and psychological. “There’s a trauma of illness that remains within you, both in the physical places that it existed; and in the mind,” she says. FEELING BODY demonstrates Kariũki’s journey towards healing. New single ‘Nazama’ (‘to sink’ in Swahili), is the album's closing track and the story's conclusion, where Nyokabi confirms her recovery. 

Whilst field recordings were very much at the centre of peace places, FEELING BODY sees Kariũki exploring her voice more than ever before, utilising her full vocal range as well as numerous automations and spoken word recordings. She also invited two NY-based collaborators, violinist Yaz Lancaster (they/them) and trumpet player Michael Denis Ó Callaghan (he/him), to contribute sounds on their instruments that are used throughout the album, which Nyokabi distorted and manipulated electronically to represent some of the symptoms of her illness.

Woven throughout the album is the thematic undercurrent of water, a recurring motif (water featured heavily on Kariũki’s peace places: kenyan memories) which was a place of solace during her illness. Water is reflected in the artwork for the cover; a painting by South Asian visual artist and Kariũki’s dear friend Serena Seshadri (she/her). Field recordings of water in different states — a river at the foot of Mount Kenya, cracking ice, a tap dripping; being submerged underwater — flow throughout the work, pointing towards Kikuyu (Nyokabi's ethnic community) homoeopathy, where river therapy was particularly prescribed to women who were struggling mentally. There’s also a nod to the symbolism of healing water in the biblical context of the River Jordan in new single, ‘Nazama’. 

“There is a lot to say about being sick, about being sick during a pandemic; about how the world treats you if you are sick for longer than “just a cold”,” says Nyokabi. “But, I am ever in awe of our bodies, and how they keep going, despite and in spite of all the pain we go through in life. In a way, this album is an expression of love, and gratitude, to my own.”