Mount Kimbie

With the release of their debut EP Maybes for Scuba's influential Berlin-based label Hot Flush Recordings in early 2009, Mount Kimbie were quickly, and rightly, tipped for big things. The duo's unique take on post-dubstep often bleeds into cinematic soundscapes and glitch electronica, ensuring that they're now mentioned in the same breath as contemporaries Joy Orbison and Actress. Now on the release of their debut album Crooks & Lovers, we check in with one half of Mount Kimbie, Dominic Maker, to find out what the last year has been like behind the scenes.

Pulse Radio: Congratulations on Crooks & Lovers, it’s a really beautiful piece of work. Are you happy with how it’s been received? Mount Kimbie: Yeah we’re really happy with the way it turned out, it feels like we’ve made something that is really honest

What were you doing before you and Kai formed Mount Kimbie? I was in a really crap teenage band called 8 Days Later (laughs). Then I worked for 3 months on a solo project, which was my first encounter with production software. I’d make a drum & bass track and then I’d make a track with really weird samples and just my voice on it. I met Kai for the first time when I moved up to London for university, and he had quite a lot of material he’d been working on beforehand, quite glitchy hip hop slash electronica kind of stuff and I was amazed as I’d never spoken to anyone or heard anyone make electronic music like that before, [it was] a real leap for me. Once we discovered dubstep we were both really intrigued by the makeup of that genre and really excited about it, going out to nights all the time. We both started working on trying to make ‘straight’ dubstep and that didn’t really work.

What wasn’t working? We just weren’t very good at it, it didn’t come naturally. Neither of us is very technically minded, and I guess a lot of what does make true dubstep great is the quality of production in the tracks. At that time we were very, very new to the genre and we’d never really worked with sub bass and it was a disaster waiting to happen (laughs). It was just a couple of weeks doing that, or maybe a month, and we were like ‘no, lets just do what comes to us naturally’. Then we introduced all of these different influences into what was initially meant to be dubstep, and from there we progressed into Mount Kimbie.

And that initial shift in your perspective resulted in your debut EP Maybes? Yeah.

It’s been just over a year between the release of Maybes and Crooks & Lovers but your sound has shifted remarkably. What was the timeline production wise between Maybes and the album? The actual whole timeline of that must be about 2.5 years, from writing Maybes to having the album finished. The album must have taken about a year to make.

"it feels natural to explore the great diversity that we’ve got in front of us. Were not limited to having to make every track a club banger, or that every track has to be this amazing emotional piece. It’s great to be able to manipulate that."

Maybes sounds very melancholy to me, with lots of murky drone sounds, almost everything you’ve done since then is much ‘sunnier’. Were there any particular influences or circumstances that affected the music of Maybes? When we first started listening to dance music it was purely dubstep that we were listening to. Loefah, early Benga, we were really interested in the deeper, darker side of the genre. We’d both just moved to London and I’d moved into a small dingy flat in Peckham that we spent a lot of time together in, and I suppose it had some kind of influence on what we eventually came out with. By the 2nd EP our own personal circumstances started to settle down. We were each living in a different location in nice houses, and had had time to explore the better side of London, as opposed to just going out, getting drunk and sitting around in the flat all the time. I suppose once we started to grow out of the student lifestyle, coming out of that really breathed fresh air into the music. The album is the most composed we’ve been for a long time.

How did you and Kai, Scuba and Hot Flush find each other? Literally from the first moment we began working as Mount Kimbie we were sending stuff to Paul (Rose). We only knew him through putting stuff up for download on dubstep Forum, and he was one of the only people who ever got back to us with any feedback. We sent him Maybes first and he was like ‘yeah, this is wicked,’ and then we did a re-edit of that.

What was it like to have Scuba, of all people, come back to you on a dubstep Forum and say ‘I love these tracks’? Initially it was for a track that I’d made on my own, part of the solo thing I was doing. I had no idea who Scuba was, what Hot Flush was, nothing. I thought, ‘I should probably check it out, I’ve been contacted by this label, I should probably see the other artists on there,’ and I’d never heard of these people at all. Then I moved to London and it dawned on me, “Jesus Christ, I need to email him back!” I emailed Paul back and said, ‘I’ve met this guy that I really want to work with and I think we’re going to do something really good, and I’ll send you through something really soon.‘ It was so surreal: someone so experienced and influential coming back to us and saying, ‘this is wicked, I want to release you guys.’ It’s an unbelievable feeling. I guess that gave us semi-confidence for a little while and then we realized we had to write more (laughs). We jumped into the deep end in that respect, but it was just wicked to be a part of such a fantastic label.

Sketch On Glass EP was a glimpse of more traditionally structured ‘dancefloor’ dubstep after Maybes, particularly with the title track finding its way into a bunch of DJ mixes and charts last year. It was certainly different from the first EP, like a total contrast where you saw a different side of the music we wanted to make. It was certainly more danceable than anything we’d ever made, and hearing it out when we went to clubs really gave us a taste of appreciation of the 12” for DJs.

Mount Kimbie "Would Know" ((OFFICIAL VIDEO)) from Mount Kimbie on Vimeo.

What was it like hearing Sketch On Glass in a club the first time? It was wicked. It sounded really nice (laughs). It’s weird hearing it on a big sound system and thinking ‘this actually sounds ok’. We were really worried that at any moment the sound was going to be to weak. We’re not the best mixers in the world; I think the mastering house did a very good job (laughs).

Do you feel there’s much of a departure between the EPs and Crooks & Lovers? I guess with the album it feels like there’s 3 parts. There’s the ‘Maybes part’, the ‘Sketch on Glass part’, and this 3rd new fresh sound. Like Mayor and Blind Night Errand which remind me of the 2nd EP greatly, Ruby is like the 1st EP, then Carbonated, which is a totally different track altogether. We’re just very fortunate in our ability to work in so many different areas and still be acceptable. It doesn’t feel disjointed or like we’re going off subject, it feels natural to explore the great diversity that we’ve got in front of us. Were not limited to having to make every track a club banger, or that every track has to be this amazing emotional piece. It’s great to be able to manipulate that.

All of the album tracks are very short, like impressions, and it feels like Crooks & Lovers is best appreciated as complete whole. Was that your intention? We’ve always worked in ‘moments’. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about not only the musical side of this record, but also the visual side, and we’ve thought really hard about the album artwork. The message with the album artwork is these moments of everyday life in South London, and I guess the tracks mirror that in a way. It’s a journey but it’s almost dreamlike in that it continually twists and changes. It isn’t there for that long; we’re not in it for a long duration.

"We’ve had months of dry periods of horrible music (laughs), making absolutely ridiculous garage songs, but its worth going through because out of a month we might get one 3 minute song that we’re really happy with."

When you’re chasing a fleeting moment or feeling while you’re writing, does the music manifest quickly, or is it a bit more laboured, particularly as its two of you trying to define one specific thing? Both of us do struggle to come out with material that we think is worthy of release, or that we even enjoy listening to. We’ve had months of dry periods of horrible music (laughs), making absolutely ridiculous garage songs, but its worth going through because out of a month we might get one 3 minute song that we’re really happy with. The way we work is to start ideas individually and then send the idea over to the other person if you struggle with it. I actually live in a different city to Kai, I live in Brighton, and he’s in London. It’s an organic production process but it’s more laboured by our inability to just pump out tunes. It takes us a long time to be on the same level; we’ve both got the sound in our head, but it’s incredibly difficult to get that down onto a screen and get that into sound form.

When did you move back to Brighton? About a year and a half ago.

Has being in different cities presented any difficulties for the two of you? The only difficulty is that I have to keep traveling up here and it costs money (laughs). I just like being by the sea, and it is quite nice being in different locations, otherwise we’d just spend most of our time together practicing the live show. It would almost be a bit too intense, we each need a bit of space. [Now] it’s almost like you’re working on your own and you have this 2nd pair of ears to listen to things, an opinion that you really respect.

Did you fall into default positions with each other when you were making music together in London, or now that you’re in different cities? We’ve never worked in a role based way, but more and more with the live show it is definitely becoming role based because we’re each playing a different instrument at any certain time. A lot of the album wouldn’t have been conceived unless it had been for the live show. We worked around tracks and ideas that we’d already started to work on, so playing things live and saying ‘this sounds good, lets record that,’ in that sense it was role based.

Has being able to perform live and instrumentally ever been a factor for you during the writing process? No, definitely not. After the second EP we just said, ‘right, we want to play live now,’ it just seemed natural. Neither of us DJ, we’ve had the experience of playing in bands before and there’s something about playing live that adds an extra element to our own enjoyment of actually making music; and the experience we’ve had with traveling and meeting people has just been priceless really. And it’s just fun to play live. I’m sure DJing is as well, but it feels like the music that we make deserves to be played live. It just feels like that’s how it should be done.

I missed your recent set at Substance but a few people I spoke to about it remarked on how much of a traditional band format you have, with little automatic sequencing. What does your live setup look like of at the moment? We run Native instruments Machine, which is the heart of the set, and then we’ve got a loop pedal, and into that runs live guitar and live vocals. We loop that and we build up drum patterns on Machine. We’ve got a live snare drum and live ride cymbal, and we also have an SPD drum pad which looks really good, much better than a touch pad, and we’ve got a simple midi keyboard. At the moment it feels like the perfect amount of equipment and there are so many different ways of breaking up each song.

"It’s just fun to play live. I’m sure DJing is as well, but it feels like the music that we make deserves to be played live."

So your live shows allow for plenty of improvisation? There’s definitely room for improvisation but the core of each track in my mind is a pattern. I know where my hands have to be at a certain time. It is tough playing live because it’s so complex with only [our] 4 hands. We do improvise quite a bit, especially more recently. We got more confident and have started to write some of the tracks we play live in a different manner.

What have been the biggest differences between live audiences in the UK and Europe? It’s very different. In England we’re playing in clubs and billed on nights with DJs and MCs. In London we’ve played at Big Chill House and in room 2 of Fabric, which was wicked. [Berlin’s] Berghain was another level, it was just incredible to play there. In Europe it’s more experimental, like with shoegaze artists or bands. We supported the XX recently, which was a good learning experience. We played with them twice, in Paris at Olympia and in Milan, and we’ve got another couple of shows coming up with them in Cologne and Munich, and that’s a whole different ballgame to playing in a small sweaty club in London. The reaction we’ve had has been really positive; so far we haven’t had a really bad show that hasn’t worked. It seems quite nice in a club format to have that break [between DJs], and on the other side, in the gig format with bands, it’s nice for people to see something a bit different.

Mount Kimbie & James Blake "Maybes" (Live in Norway) from Mount Kimbie on Vimeo.

Alongside remixes for other dubstep producers you have a growing discography of mixes for The XX and other indie bands, how have these collaborations come about? It’s progressed naturally. The Big Pink “Velvet” was the first remix we’ve ever done, and at that point we’d been out of touch with that sort of music for so long, it was refreshing. Working with a male vocal as well was totally different to what we’d worked with before. That was very impersonal, though. The label got in touch with us and said, ‘would you like to do a remix?’ We said yes. With The XX, from very early on, before they started to boom, we were big fans of their EPs and we became friends with their management, and from there we met the band and got chatting to them and they became friends. We went for a slightly different take than on the Big Pink remix which was the heaviest track we’ve made, and it was nice to go a bit more interesting and ambient. The Foals was the same as The Big Pink, we were asked by one of the members of the band to remix “Spanish Sahara” and we liked the vocal a lot. It was quite challenging to work with that vocal because it’s so strong, and has such a big block of lyrical content. It seemed wrong to cut it up and make it sound like a girl (laughs). The way we look at remixes is that neither of us are particularly fond of them, but when the right track comes along and there’s something we can add to or change in some way or put a different take on it, we do it.

You’re now often mentioned in the same breath as artists like your label mate Joy Orbison and James Blake. Do you look at these artists and see a like-mindedness of musical vision? We’re quite good friends with a lot of people in this ‘scene’ and James is a really good friend of ours, [but] James isn’t like anyone else, Joy Orbison’s a world apart from James and so on. The relationship we have with people is that we have mutual respect. We send songs back and forth and get each other’s opinions. Everyone’s coming with something fresh.

Your very first album has just been released. What’s next for Mount Kimbie? For the future we have no idea what were doing. At the moment it’s really all about touring, and luckily for us working on the live show is so much fun. Every week we’re changing things and developing, and we’ve got a US tour coming up in September. It’s amazing to have that opportunity to go across. I’ve never been to the States and neither has Kai so we’re really looking forward to that, and more dates in Europe and a UK tour. It’s quite like acting like a band even though we’re not! We’re both ready to write the 2nd album now. As soon as we finished the 1st one we were like ‘lets write another one’. It felt natural, like we got it out of our system, but at the moment it’s nice to just sit back and take it all in.

Christine Kakaire

photos: Tyrone Le Bon