Mount Kimbie Dubstep 4 Items

In 2010, Mount Kimbie released their debut album, Crooks & Lovers, to widespread acclaim. Perfectly capturing the heady atmosphere of the moment, the album melded the wide-eyed mentality of what had become known as ‘Post-Dubstep’ with an open-minded musical sensibility that produced an instant classic. Ten years later, the album is reissued on Hotflush with a bonus disc of the band’s first ever release.

Dom Maker and Kai Campos have always known how to masterfully synthesise their talents into one singular yet ever changing vision. Since beginning in 2009, their work has morphed from their distinctly British sound of dubstep and techno to the boundaryless and densely packed collaborations of Love What Survives. Five years after that scintillating record, the two take their talents as Mount Kimbie to new extremes by splitting them in half entirely.

Having walked separate paths musically and physically in the world over the years since Love What Survives, Dom and Kai took a literal approach to their latest record, separating it into two distinct, independently produced albums - but linked through shared senses of sonic haziness and melody. Die Cuts shows Dom Maker at a collaborative peak, interspersing vocal cuts, samples, and urban sounds in swiftly stitched vignettes with a slowed down, lo-fi flair. Meanwhile, the chugging beats of City Planning mimic train tracks, as Kai Campos’ album contains rhythmic paintings of urbanity with detailed sonic architecture. These two sides of Mount Kimbie are as different as day and night, yet they inform each other greatly, speaking a simultaneous message from separate locations.

The opening track ‘dvd’ on Die Cuts features a mystical siren song fading in, before slowthai and Danny Brown’s expressive vocals cut through on ‘in your eyes’, trading bittersweet and apoplectic verses. An eerie alarm echoes on ‘heat on, lips on', subsiding with punchy beat and skittering keys, and a scathing, mercurial spoken word spiralling to jazzy loops depicting intimate struggles. City Planning in similar fashion shifts from tense, burrowing bass rumbles to fluttering synth droplets forming rivers of sound. The molten underground beat of ‘Transit Map (Flattened)’ lurches and groans, with piano notes sprawling like the many-coloured intersecting lines of a subway map.

Even when split in two, Mount Kimbie provide yet another total upheaval of their sound, combining their individual strengths for a roaringly creative album on MK 3.5.

Dom Maker and Kai Campos have always known how to masterfully synthesise their talents into one singular yet ever changing vision. Since beginning in 2009, their work has morphed from their distinctly British sound of dubstep and techno to the boundaryless and densely packed collaborations of Love What Survives. Five years after that scintillating record, the two take their talents as Mount Kimbie to new extremes by splitting them in half entirely.

Having walked separate paths musically and physically in the world over the years since Love What Survives, Dom and Kai took a literal approach to their latest record, separating it into two distinct, independently produced albums - but linked through shared senses of sonic haziness and melody. Die Cuts shows Dom Maker at a collaborative peak, interspersing vocal cuts, samples, and urban sounds in swiftly stitched vignettes with a slowed down, lo-fi flair. Meanwhile, the chugging beats of City Planning mimic train tracks, as Kai Campos’ album contains rhythmic paintings of urbanity with detailed sonic architecture. These two sides of Mount Kimbie are as different as day and night, yet they inform each other greatly, speaking a simultaneous message from separate locations.

The opening track ‘dvd’ on Die Cuts features a mystical siren song fading in, before slowthai and Danny Brown’s expressive vocals cut through on ‘in your eyes’, trading bittersweet and apoplectic verses. An eerie alarm echoes on ‘heat on, lips on', subsiding with punchy beat and skittering keys, and a scathing, mercurial spoken word spiralling to jazzy loops depicting intimate struggles. City Planning in similar fashion shifts from tense, burrowing bass rumbles to fluttering synth droplets forming rivers of sound. The molten underground beat of ‘Transit Map (Flattened)’ lurches and groans, with piano notes sprawling like the many-coloured intersecting lines of a subway map.

Even when split in two, Mount Kimbie provide yet another total upheaval of their sound, combining their individual strengths for a roaringly creative album on MK 3.5.