Mount Kimbie

All Music Guide:

With familiar beats underneath otherworldly productions, Mount Kimbie are arguably responsible for the birth of the term “post-dubstep.” Dominic Maker and Kai Campos formed Mount Kimbie while both were attending Southbank University in London. In early 2009 they released their debut EP, Maybes, via the Hotflush Recordings label. Later in the year a second EP, Sketch on Glass, appeared and was followed by remixes for the likes of the Big Pink, Foals, and the xx. Hotflush released their full-length debut, Crooks & Lovers, in 2010.

Wikipedia:

Mount Kimbie is a British electronic music duo consisting of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos. They formed the group in London in 2008 and released their debut album Crooks & Lovers on 19 June 2010 in the UK to critical acclaim. Mount Kimbie are currently working on their second album which will be released on Warp Records.

History [edit]

Kai Campos is originally from St. Austell in Cornwall, while Dom Maker is from Brighton. They met at Southbank University in London, where Campos was having another go at university and Maker was studying film. They started making music together at a home studio in Peckham.

Arguably responsible for the term "post-dubstep", the duo has released a series of EPs and their highly praised debut album Crooks & Lovers. The Guardian described the pair as "leading an exploratory breakaway from bass-heavy dubstep towards a lighter, hazier style of electronica rich with drowsy ambience and chopped-up found sounds."

The band's debut album, entitled Crooks and Lovers, was released on 19 June 2010 in the UK to critical acclaim, and achieved a 7.9 ADM Rating on review aggregator website AnyDecentMusic?.

At the end of 2010, Crooks & Lovers was included in over thirty 'Best of 2010' lists, including NME, Mixmag, DJ Magazine, Resident Advisor, Pitchfork Media, Drowned In Sound, Boomkat, FACT, Rough Trade and Phonica Records. NME listed them at number 22 in their 30 Artists For 2011.

The pair are closely linked to friend, producer and BBC Sound of 2011 runner-up, James Blake. He has collaborated with them live and lent his skills to the remixing of "Maybes" which features on the Mount Kimbie EP Remixes Part 1, released 12 April 2010, as well as contributing elements to Crooks & Lovers.

Mount Kimbie have produced remixes for The Big Pink, Foals, The xx and Andreya Triana.

Mount Kimbie signed to Warp Records in June 2012.

Maybes EP [edit]

The band's Maybes EP was released on 2 February 2009 through Hotflush Recordings as 12" vinyl and digital download. The EP was described by Pitchfork Media as having "character, humor, light chaos, nice sound design, and real melodic imperative". Resident Advisor reckoned "That the duo have managed something this accomplished for their debut indicates the probable arrival of a major talent" while XLR8R described the work as "deceptively complex, with a sense of floating formlessness akin to the gentler side of '90s-era British IDM".

A1. Maybes A2. William B1. Vertical B2. Taps

Sketch on Glass EP [edit]

The band's second EP, Sketch on Glass was released on 31 July 2009 on Hotflush Recordings receiving rave reviews on Resident Advisor, with FACT stating that the duo have "essentially proved that they can take on most of dubstep’s more interesting strains and fit them to their own vision; in many cases bettering their more experienced peers."

A1. Sketch On Glass A2. Serged B1. Fifty Mile View B2. At Least

Crooks & Lovers album [edit]

The band released Crooks & Lovers on Hotflush Recordings on 19 July 2010. Pitchfork Media called it a "beautiful, small and clever album", Vice Magazine awarded it 10/10, describing the record as one which "stands out as something genuinely special", and NME placed it at number fifty-six in their top Seventy Albums of 2010. It was Rough Trade's Album of the Week, Drowned In Sound described the record as "yet another indefinable beast, one that seems to take real joy in refusing to bow to expectations, and avoids conventional song structures in favour of hazy, dreamlike composition" and "certainly a contender for album of the year"

The duo used a mixture of field recordings, samples and live instrumentation to create the album, about which Campos stated "we don’t record for a certain purpose, or with a motive, it's more to see what comes out of it... it's never the noises you think are going to work that do, which keeps it interesting." and Maker said that "getting the record done was like reaching the pinnacle of the sound we were trying to achieve when we started out making music together" and said of the writing of the record, "It’s been a very gradual process, and we’ve been playing live a lot over the past few months, so it’s been all about taking ideas and working on them between shows… Constructing the live set was really helpful in terms of actually finishing off ideas. We slowly realised that if something sounds good at the time, don’t sit there and overproduce it for weeks and weeks – there’s no need. Doing it live really helps with that."

By the end of 2010, Crooks & Lovers had been included in over 30 Best of 2010 lists. BBC Music said "Crooks & Lovers is an album of abrupt changes and paradoxes, at once organic and heavily processed, drowsy and yet with moments of eyes-on-stalks urgency, acoustically sweet and electrically charged. It's akin to gently drifting in and out of consciousness on a bus trip, only to be sporadically jolted back into consciousness."

The album was among the 12 shortlisted for Drowned In Sound's Neptune Music Prize in 2010, and was also nominated for The Guardian 's 'First Album Award' in the same year.

Tracklisting:

"Mayor / Would Know" [edit]

The first single from Crooks & Lovers was "Mayor / Would Know". It was released on 12" vinyl and digital. The video for "Would Know" was directed by Tyrone Lebon.

Blind Night Errand EP [edit]

Blind Night Errand EP was released on 29 November 2010 on 12" vinyl and digital download. The EP included the song "Before I Move Off" of which there is a video by Tyrone Lebon which debuted on Pitchfork Media - the video is a montage of 8000 photographs. The EP also includes an alternate version of "William" remixed by Mount Kimbie themselves, alongside a live recording of "Maybes" taken from a set at the Berghain club in Berlin.

Tracklisting:

Carbonated EP [edit]

The Carbonated EP is the last release derived from material from the Crooks & Lovers album, and includes remixes of the title track by Airhead and Peter Van Hoesen. B-sides include "Baves Chords", produced at the same time as the Maybes EP, and "Flux", written for the Carbonated EP. The video was again directed by Tyrone Lebon. A session version of the title track "Carbonated", recorded at SXSW in 2011 features on the 'Best of Daytrotter 2011' list.

Cold Spring Fault Less Youth album [edit]

On 25th March 2013 Pitchfork announced the release of Mount Kimbie's second album, "Cold Spring Fault Less Youth". The album is due for release on 28th May 2013 with Warp Records and features two collaborations with King Krule. [1]

Both Dominic Maker and Kai Campos sing on "Made to Stray", which is new for the duo. In a press release, Maker said, "Two years is a long time. Tastes change, what you want out of your life changes, and so on. Naturally, how we want to sound has changed too."

The announcement of the second album was welcomed by most major music press including: [[Clash M<agazine]], This is Fake DIY, FACT Magazine, Dummy and Mixmag. On March 26th 2013 Pitchfork made "Made to Stray" best new track. [2]

Campos says in an interview with Pitchfork Media "With Mount Kimbie, we started off trying to imitate other stuff-- and we failed. But in failing to do that, we stumbled across a sound that's inherently our own. Failing to imitate others only happens because of the mindset that you come from. It's part of finding your own voice. When musicians go through that, the results are, by definition, original. Most of the music that sounds like it's been influenced by [Crooks & Lovers] that has come out since sounds fairly dull, and it's not something we want to carry on doing. We want to get away from it." [3].

Maker says in an interview with FACT “The new stuff is a lot more free than the songs we’ve done before, in terms of composition. It’s still entirely produced on a computer, but the drums and percussion are much more live in their feel, in rhythm and in flow. In terms of the actual sound…it’s quite a bit bigger sounding that what we’ve done before. I think it’s still quite delicate material, but it has a bigger sound compared to the last album, and I think that must be informed really greatly by what we’ve spent the last two years doing – playing live.” [4]

Maker on their approach to new material in an interview with Resident Advisor in November 2012, "Since we've been writing new material, we've tried to reinterpret and change how we actually do things live. We got a drummer in for our show [at Ether] and we've obviously been doing new material, and it sounds quite different from what we've done before. So it's really been perfect to try and make it more of a band experience as opposed to just two guys up there with electronic equipment. Obviously the electronics are still there, but I think we're quite cautious to try and make it more live than it ever has been." [5]

In an interview by The Astral Plane in November 2012: "We’re just pretty slow at working really; it takes us ages to get this shit together, so it hasn’t been a conscious decision. It’s been a good thing in some ways, like we haven’t put anything out for so long. It kind of feels like the last record almost feels stronger than it did a year ago because we haven’t done anything, so the record has just been sitting around for a year solidifying. It had its certain time and place, it’s not just something that we did along the way. Hopefully this next one feels like a decent, weighty statement. At the same time you don’t want to think about it too much, because it can slow you down; you’ve always got the next record to make things better. However, we are very conscious of it [quality control], just being very comfortable with everything that’s coming out." [6]

On 6th February 2013 Red Bull Music Academy featured a full interview with Mount Kimbie in the second episode of their H∆SHTAG$ series. The band discuss the ideas and work that went into the recording process for their forthcoming album for Warp Records. [7]

Ben UFO played a new song "Made To Stray" on his weekly Rinse FM show on 7th March 2013. [8] This is known to be the first and only new Mount Kimbie track from the second album out in existence so far.

Tracklisting:

Style [edit]

Some other prominent artists of post-dubstep are Joy Orbison, James Blake, Actress, Untold and Ikonika, but Mount Kimbie were described by Inhabit Online Magazine as pioneers of a truly unique sound. Pitchfork Media described the duo's music as "pretty, mostly mid-tempo tracks between three and four minutes long with sped-up vocal samples, little tunnels of ambience, unimposing synth patches, and syncopated percussion that sounds like someone putting away the silverware."

The duo use field recordings to form major elements of their music. "It’s amazing what you can pick up with a field microphone. I mean, you might just hear someone riding around but when you slow it down it’s almost like there’s a beat to it. And then just taking little pockets of that rhythm and stretching it out. A lot of what we do is about experimenting with different little bits of tone that you don’t necessarily hear on the first listen... and then trying to make songs out of them."

Live [edit]

Mount Kimbie play many instruments live including guitars, bass, keyboards, Native Instruments Maschine, delay pedals, samplers, Korg Kaosspad, drum pads, snare, ride cymbal, and vocals. James Blake was once a touring member of the band.

In 2010, Mount Kimbie toured the UK, Europe and America. They were also involved in the festival circuit playing at The Great Escape Festival, Stag & Dagger festival, Glade Festival, Field Day Festival and Bestival amongst others. The duo were then invited to perform at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards event in February 2011.

In March and April 2011, they embarked on a US tour which included performances at SXSW and Coachella. They also toured in Australia in March, selling out all six of their performances, with Australia's The Vine saying of their Melbourne performance, "They flesh out skeletal elements of tracks with alternative instrumentation, or accentuate features with subtle additions or substitutions. In this way much of the material aired tonight is invigoratingly bolstered, altered or augmented in some way. It makes for a stimulating performance." However, regarding a live realisation of Crooks & Lovers in Glasgow in early 2011 The Guardian said that "presenting such short tunes as standalone pieces when they might function better threaded together gives the set a disjointed feel."

The duo sold out their headline show at Heaven on 28 April 2011 and were joined by James Blake at their Warehouse Project show on 26/11/11. In September2011 they played Split Works' inaugural Black Rabbit festival in China alongside artists like Gold Panda and Perfume Genius.

Mount Kimbie headlined a sold out show at Ether Festival, Southbank Centre in October 2012. [1]

The group toured North America with Squarepusher in Oct/Nov 2012.

The Astral Plane interviewed Mount Kimbie in November 2012 where they discussed the technical aspects of their live and studio setups. [2]

TV [edit]

In April 2011 Mount Kimbie appeared on Channel 4's Abbey Road Debuts, a new music programme from the producers of Live from Abbey Road.