Mount Kimbie

Wikipedia:

Mount Kimbie is a British electronic duo that formed in London, England in 2008. The duo consists of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos who released their debut album Crooks & Lovers on the 19th June 2010 in the UK to widespread critical acclaim. Mount Kimbie are currently working on album 2.

History

Mount Kimbie is made up of Kai Campos and Dom Maker. Kai is originally from St. Austell in Cornwall, while Dom is from Brighton. They met at Southbank University in London, where Kai was having another go at university and Dom 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 unique EPs and their highly praised debut album Crooks & Lovers. The Guardian describes 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.

Maybes EP

The band's Maybes EP was released on 2nd February 2009 through Hotflush Recordings and is available as 12" vinyl and digital download. The debut release received wide spread critical acclaim with a favourable review from Pitchfork Media, who describe the EP as having "character, humor, light chaos, nice sound design, and real melodic imperative". Resident Advisor also reviewed the EP positively, reckoning "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

Sketch on Glass EP was the band's second EP released on 31st 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

The band released Crooks & Lovers to critical acclaim 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 called it a "lush collection of soul-stepping miniatures" placing it at number fifty-six in their top Seventy Albums of 2010. For Mixmag it "breaks all genre rules going" and is "really quite beautiful". 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" with iDJ Magazine awarding it 10 out of 10, proclaiming the album to be a "triumph in experimental music".

The duo used a mixture of field recordings, samples and live instrumentation to create the album, Campos stating of the process, "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." Maker goes on to state 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 says 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 The Guardian 's prestigious 'First Album Award' in the same year.

Tracklisting:

"Mayor / Would Know"

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

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

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.

Style

Mount Kimbie exist alongside other prominent artists of post-dubstep like Joy Orbison, James Blake, Actress, Untold and Ikonika. However, the pair are recognised as pioneers of a truly unique sound that is cast over a vast number of genres. Pitchfork Media describes 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 are well known for using 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

Mount Kimbie are known to play many instruments live ranging from 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 April and March of 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."

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 2012, Mount Kimbie are set to embark on a tour which will see them perform in Russia, Singapore and Australia.

TV

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

Internet music channel BeatCast broadcast a 30-minute set performed by the duo at 2010's The Great Escape Festival in Brighton, available to view at the BeatCast website.