Mount Kimbie

“It’s a question of being respectful to each other,” Dom Maker says of the art of collaboration. It’s a simple ethic, but one that has yielded rich rewards. Since 2009, Maker and his partner in Mount Kimbie, Kai Campos, have played a central role in forging a new form for electronic music. Their influence stretches far beyond the tiny corner of the dance music underground that birthed them and, with the duo now signed to the legendary Warp label, it looks set to stretch further still in the coming years. Since their emergence Mount Kimbie have repeatedly confounded expectations, transforming themselves from bedroom-studio producers to creators of one of the most fully realised electronic album-length statements of recent years. This year, with the release of the duo’s second LP, the perception of what Mount Kimbie is looks set to expand again. Still, at the heart of the band’s music lies that simplest of things: the meeting of two musical minds.

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The first evidence of the impact Mount Kimbie would have came with the Maybes EP, released on then-dubstep label Hotflush in 2009. It was swiftly followed by the more colourful Sketch On Glass EP, and within the space of a few months Campos and Maker found themselves at the forefront of a new wave of bedroom producers radically re-interpreting the dubstep template. “In the early stages of Mount Kimbie everything happened very fast,” Maker recalls. “I remember the first show we ever did - actually getting paid money to play in this church in Oslo. It was a really bizarre feeling, almost like we’d cheated the system.” Released the following year, Crooks & Lovers was not only the summation of Mount Kimbie’s career so far, but helped kick-start the so-called “post-dubstep” scene that would soon coalesce around them. The record consolidated the band’s signature sound - fragmented guitar licks, stumbling garage-inflected percussion, fractured vocals - and topped a slew of “best of 2010” lists in the process.

Where the soundworld of Crooks & Lovers was largely electronic, with fragmented guitar and vocal lines hinting at a human touch, their new material sees the duo embracing live instrumentation alongside a reinvigorated enthusiasm for electronics. In a sense, 2013 is the year that Mount Kimbie cease to be simply producers, becoming instead composers, performers, arrangers - in short, taking the reins of a project that’s more fully realised than ever before. Cold Spring Fault Less Youth shot through with warm organ chords and earthy live drums, feels looser, richer, and more enveloping than the duo’s past work. More significantly, vocals have a new prominence, functioning as the central protagonist in songs that move beyond dancefloor convention to explore forms which are definitely ambitious, but still feel like 2009’s Mount Kimbie. Cold Spring Fault Less Youth’s musical language evokes larger spaces, grander emotions.

Perhaps this is a natural progression for a band who are no longer new kids on the block, having embraced popular music in a manner similar to James Blake - a long-standing musical ally who was a member of the band for early live shows. Now entering their fifth year of success, the duo are aware that the rules of engagement have changed. “Things have gone as well as they could’ve gone for us so far, in terms of being a small band and finding an audience,” says Campos. “Certainly a bigger audience than we expected. But just because of the nature of our culture, people get very excited about new acts - and we’re not exactly new any more.” Not new, perhaps, but arguably more exciting and relevant than ever. “Since the first record came out we’ve been learning to be better artists really,” say Campos. Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is proof, if it were needed, that that journey hasn’t been in vain.