Mount Kimbie R.A. Mix & Would Know (Video)
Monday, July 19th, 2010
The London-based duo mix up influences and fresh material on this week’s podcast.
Bursting onto the scene with their Maybes EP at the start of 2009, Mount Kimbie, the duo of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos, quickly impressed heads with their idiosyncratic takes on micro-garage, wistful downtempo techno and loping, twee dubstep. Their willingness to subvert such a multitude of genres gives them a sound unlike any other, skewing typical song structures but with a keen sense of melody.
This week heralds the release of their debut album, Crooks & Lovers, which sees Campos and Maker spread their loose and dreamy sound over a short but sweet 35 minutes. They’ve been busy touring with their current live set-up, recently playing at Berghain for Sub:stance’s 2nd birthday, but this week’s RA podcast sees the pair eschew the instruments for a specially tailored showcase of where their musical heads are right now. We shot them an e-mail to ask about the mix, plans for DJing in the future and their current live show.
What have you been working on recently?
Mostly we have been trying to improve our live set, bit by bit. It can be hard to find enough time to use everything we’re learning between shows, but we’re adding stuff all the time. Really looking forward to sitting down and writing some new music soon though.
How and where was the mix recorded?
The mix was recorded at Kai’s house in South London using a laptop, a Kaoss pad, and for various technical reasons a 4-track tape machine and a field mic!
Can you tell us a little bit about the mix?
It’s more of a collage – I wanted to show some stuff that has really had an influence but we don’t often talk about, I guess. People ask about why or how we decided to make the music or ‘the sound’ that we have so far and it’s always quite hard to answer and seems a bit weird. It’s often hard for two producers to work together but I think we both were in the same place and had a similar idea of where we wanted to go artistically. This mix defiantly represents one side of that. In a sense each one of the songs (excluding our own) has been like someone you meet on the way to somewhere else, if that makes any sense, and I hope that all together they give a better sense of our movements over the last couple of years.
How have the live shows been going? Have you had any difficulty translating the more complex parts of the album into a live configuration?
The live shows have mostly been amazing. It’s just a completely separate art and one that we’re excited about and learning a lot about all the time. Some of our songs can seem impossible to play in an interesting way in our current set-up. We tend to change them a bit depending on the song and how we feel we can express it best in the live environment.
Did you have much input when it came to selecting the artists for the two remix EPs? What did you make of the results?
Yeah, we were asked, but it’s a bit funny because my mind went kind of blank. I love the remix EPs. I didn’t know how much I liked the Instra:mental remix until I heard it by chance a few weeks after it had come out, and it just hit me, and I always think that’s a good sign.
An artist named Klaus seems to be a new collaborator for you guys, with an unreleased track here on this mix. What can you tell us about him?
Klaus is another guy from South London. He makes really beautiful music that’s original and so well crafted. We met through James Blake. I think James was playing a really early beat or sketch that Dom had done and he really liked it, took it home, cut it up and made quite a bit of the track in the mix. Then I got him to send over some bits that he used and added more and another ending which got cut off in this mix. It was actually a really fun way to work and we’d like to do more with him soon.
What are you up to next?
Lots more gigs this summer. A couple of dates with The XX, US tour in September, then back to Europe for a bit. That should keep us busy for a while which is great, and then hopefully we’ll have time to look back at 2010 and figure out where we want to go next.
Tracklist;
William Basinski – Melancholia 1 – 2062
Klaus – Tusk – Unreleased
Extract from ‘Night’ episode of ‘The Hackney Podcast’
Xela – Wet Bones – Type Records
Mount Kimbie – William (Mount Kimbie DayGlo Mix) – Unreleased
James Blake – Tep and The Logic – Unreleased
Sigha – Expansions – Hotflush Recordings
Klaus & Mount Kimbie – The People Took – Unreleased
Philip Jeck – Spirits Up – Touch
Konono N°1 – Lufuala Ndonga – Congotronics
Mount Kimbie – At Least (Instra:mental Remix) – Hotflush Recordings
Mount Kimbie – Blind Night Errand – Hotflush Recordings
Mount Kimbie – Vertical (Pig’s Ear Edit) – Unreleased
Clogs – Tides of Washington Bridge – Talitres
Actress – Again the Addiction – Werk Discs
