- From garage to electro, and downtempo to jungle and back again from the understated force behind KIMCHI records.
- Kim Bruun says he inherited the name Patamamba from his father, who introduced him to electronic music by sharing his love of "Goa, trance, ambient, world recordings and sometimes techno and house." That melting pot of genres came together in technicolor on his debut EP, NK Experience, which could have easily been a retrospective by Safe Trip or Music From Memory. The A-side was vintage New York deep house with samples of live instrumentation and percussion from Bruun's native Ecuador while the flip was full of throwback breakbeats and acid lines somewhere between spiritual wayfinding and peak time banging. Since then, the Quito-born, Berlin-based producer has receded behind the scenes. He's opened Berlin's newest epicenter for all things deep, KIMCHI records, with fellow Ecuadorian transplant Martin Chicaiza, and only occasionally surfaces to DJ or play a live set. He now returns to production on Kimchi's in-house label with AEORI, an EP that continues his genre hopping, touching on electro, downtempo and garage, all embellished with Bruun's penchant for drawn out, emotional chords.
The gravitas of Bruun's music varies depending on the genre he's working with, running the gamut from tongue-in-cheek to deeply meditative. On opener "Mae Au (Ambience Mix)" he stretches chords out over bubbly acid lines and hand drums for an almost kitschy piece of New Age revivalism. The chords are no less dramatic on "Eepl 1434," but the UK garage swing of the drums and the robotic short-circuiting of the high-end turn it into a bouncy piece of new minimal with an emotive sigh. There's a melancholy throughline through it all—it's hard to keep track of the dueling synth and 303 lines on the bananas breakbeat track "Oniko (LFS Underground Mix)," but there's still a hint of blue.
Bruun cut his teeth DJing and throwing parties in Quito alongside Cosmic JD and Nicola Cruz in the late 2000s. All three producers share a penchant for fusing the plaintive with the stripped down and funky (exhibit A: Bruun's live set recorded as a warm-up for Cruz in 2019). AEORI carries on this tradition while forging an aesthetic signature for Bruun. The tracks here are primed for the dance floor, but Bruun adds a personal introspection to his encyclopedic knowledge of dance music traditions.
TracklistA1 Mae Au (Ambience Mix)
A2 SOL
B1 Eepl 1434
B2 Oniko (LFS Underground Mix)
B3 Assin Break