aaamusic | On 13, Jul 2010

Adding a percussive and experimental edge to the current class of post-dubstep pioneers, Mount Kimbie – made up of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos -are set to release their much anticipated debut album ‘Crooks & Lovers’ on Scuba’s label, Hotflush in July.
Mount Kimbie’s first two EPs – ‘Maybes’ and ‘Sketch On Glass’ – seemed like explorations of spaces so private that all within earshot were turned instantly into voyeurs. The experience was less like listening to music and more like eavesdropping on the machinations of a lone mind – albeit a lone mind surrounded by and retreating from millions of other minds.
Difficult to categorise, the lush EPs caused a commotion when released last year with ‘Sketch On Glass’ recently undergoing reworks from the likes of Falty DL, SCB (the darker techno alias of Scuba), and their sometime collaborator James Blake. With their own remixes (Foals and The xx) becoming hot property on the blogosphere, Mount Kimbie have been a core part of the growing electronic music scene in London so often associated with labels like Hyperdub and Hessle Audio.
Dom & Kai met whilst at Southbank University, pushed together in student halls which used to be an old mental asylum -the ceilings were still ridiculously high to stop patients hanging themselves: “a cold, joyless, concrete building – the sort of building where you’d drop a pen and the sound would just go on and on in an echo.”
Armed with found sound snips and a siege mentality, Kai and Dom set about turning London’s ambience into rhythm, its chaos into coherence. Traces of influence remain – the hard-earned spaces of Burial and The Bug vie with the berserk melodrama of Xiu Xiu and Grouper’s sad-eyed glow, D’Angelo’s pervert soul gets cleansed in the intimacy of Phil Elvrum’s Microphones, Angelo Badalamenti’s swollen ‘Twin Peaks’ atmospheres find a cradle in Madlib’s lax lope.
The band’s sound and response to the dubstep moment is very much their own. Sceneless and untethered from etiquette and genre codes, Crooks & Lovers floats through dubstep and hip-hop, jazz, techno and ambient, post-rock, UK garage and film scores to startling effect.
Mount Kimbie – who play as a live band – have announced a string of UK festivals & shows for the summer.

23rd September- Victoria, BC –  Rifflandia festival
24th September – Seattle –  Decibel Festival
25th September – San Francisco –  club TBC
26th September – L.A. –  Downtown Independent Theatre
27th September – Colorado – Fox theatre
28th September – Boston – Wonder Bar
30th September – Toronto TBC
01st October – New York – The Bunker
02nd October – Montreal –  Le Belmont Sur le Boulevard

Get your free download Mount Kimbie – Field here!