Vertical Offshoot

(For The Stool Pigeon and SHOOK Magazine)

Mount Kimbie write mid-tempo glacial ravescapes, doused in sea spray and cast against housey, pitchshifted vocals. Sounds familiar? Think again. Burial’s mist drenched 2-step set the scene for an army of citers, but the London duo’s tonic of melodic minimalism, subtle release and post-rock tonality has smudged the canvas. Their two eps Maybes and Sketch on Glass traversed the edges of drone and dubstep without indulging either. The resulting tension is exactly what makes the music both difficult and instantly transcendent.

Their breakout song, Maybes, is something of a phenomenon. Sonic tonne-chunk ice caps break off, giving way to a steaming dancefloor of spectres and half-light. Since Mary Anne Hobbs dropped it on her Experimental show late last year, an unmodest number of audiophiles - Ramadanman, Untold, and Scuba to name a few - have dashed their sets with the skewered sounds. In an exclusive interview we caught up with Dom Maker and Kai Campos, the brains behind the noise, to discuss the year ahead…


Me: Your music is depthy, with subtle allusions to various alternative sounds. How did you come to striking a balance between your influences?

Kai: On one hand, I don't attempt to strike a balance between anything, things permeate from your subconscious that you would never have thought would influence you. I think the only thing I could say is that there's a need for me (at the moment) to continue writing this with a strong basis in pop music.

Dom: This is definitely an area that we have never really thought about. I think that when I produce anything, that isn't deleted with haste, the last thing I want on my mind are the sounds that I have heard before. I'm a very impressionable person and thus if I hear hip hop, I make hip hop, if I hear techno I make techno. It’s very frustrating, but occasionally I catch my musical memory off guard and something that I suppose most closely resembles the fusion of 'various alternative sounds' appears on the screen.

Me: Yours it seems is one of the success stories of Radio 1’s Experimental show and homage to the exposure fledging artists can enjoy in the New Media age. How rapid was the response to the track?

Dom: Well, to be honest, the only reason Mount Kimbie was being played on the BBC at that 'Maybes' time was Rob Booth, who runs Electronic Explorations (a SICK podcast). He sent some tracks to Mary Anne and then we found ourselves doing a mix for her show. We had a 'gathering' of close friends to listen to it going on air, kicking off at around 7pm, foolishly forgetting she comes on at around 2am, by the time it was played most of us were absolutely battered, but we were really blown away by the whole thing. Having songs played on the radio is great.


Me: What’s the plan for the New Year? Can listeners look forward to a long player?

Dom: Our plan for the New Year is mainly to go to as many countries, towns and cities in Europe and the UK and play live. We have worked ridiculously hard on the new live set and really want to play it everywhere. There are some big nights lined up for the beginning of this year and we are thinking about going further afield by the summer. Listeners can look forward to an LP. We are writing it at the moment in fact.


Me: What was the vibe like at Impakt (an audio visual festival) in the Netherlands? Did the artistic accompaniments compliment or complicate the sound?

Kai: Impakt was cool, although on our particular night there wasn't much of a visual aspect (that I noticed). We had some serious technicals that night. Two of the most stressful hours of our lives came before that gig and we were still fixing stuff when a curtain got pull back and we had to play. To be honest I didn't take that much in. After we played a slightly strained and anxious 40 minutes, The Bug and Flowdan came on and just killed it. My favourite set of 2009 by a fair distance (The Bug's, not ours!).

Me: How about playing in the St Jakobskirken Church in Oslo?

Dom: The vibe was really refreshing. I definitely found that Scandinavians are better than the British at A. Dancing and B. Having a good time. The whole attitude towards live music is different. When we were playing people were going "sshhhhh!" if anyone spoke. The fact that the gig was held in a beautiful church, which was filled with smoke, dim gold lighting and drone music between acts, was just incredible. In terms of the people we’ve played with, the vast contrast in style, genre and presentation was refreshing and interesting. It was amazing to go to a night and not hear familiar sounds to be honest.

Me: Do you think you’re going to start branching out on the instrumentation you use in live settings? Fennesz uses his guitar to create ambient tones similar to yours, for example?

Kai: Well we always have used live instrumentation in our live set, there’s a bit more guitar now but not in a Fennesz way, closer to a shit Ramones covers band.

Dom: In our new live set, we've stayed true to the 'very much live, no bullshit' elements of the set we used to do with James Blake, but we are using a different set-up entirely. We use guitars, a snare drum, a ride cymbal and some pieces of hardware, even our own voices, croaky and tuneless as they may be. We want to use a full drum kit but that’s serious hassle. I think the way we have worked this time feels like the right way to go. Firstly, we both love actually playing live. DJing is cool but it just doesn’t compare, for me anyway. Secondly, I do feel to some extent that the music we make requires to be played 'live', just to get across the feeling of each track properly. When I'm listening to certain sections of our new and old material, I always think 'I want to hit a snare drum repeatedly, as much as possible. Thankfully, that dream will now be realised!