Mount Kimbie - Crooks & Lovers

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

4...according to our Clinton on Fri 16 Jul, 2010.

I'm reviewing this over a conversation about pizza's. Everyone is chipping in. Business Lady in particular is extremely knowledgable on the subject. So apparently is the lady photographed on the cover of this impressive album. Lets just say that she is rather rotund of posterior. It gives no clue to what the music contained inside (the album not the arse though i wouldn't be suprised if she was keeping a jumbo sized hi fi system in there). Its kind of unclassifiable post dubstep stuff. Deep atmospheres recalling Burial, Prefuse 73 style glitch, soulful cut and paste samples that nod towards Madlib then just when you think you have it figured up pops some lovely cut up acoustics recalling The Books. Its an inspired waltz through dubstep, instrumental soulful hip-hop, UK soul,ambient, post-rock yet it doesn't sound schizophrenic. A lovely, hypnotic album from start to finish and highly recommended.

To play these clips you need to either update your browser (Norman Records recommends Google Chrome) or update your Flash plugin.

Adding a percussive and experimental edge to the current class of post-dubstep pioneers, Mount Kimbie, the duo of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos - are set to release their highly anticipated debut album ‘Crooks & Lovers’ on Scuba's Hotflush label 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 instantly turned 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 Faulty DL, SCB (Scuba’s darker techno alias) and their sometime collaborator James Blake. With their own remixes (Foals and The xx) becoming hot property, Mount Kimbie have been a core part of the growing scene in London often associated with labels like Hyperdub and Hessle Audio.

Dom and Kai met whilst at Southbank University, pushed together in a student halls that was previously a mental asylum - where 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 European festivals & shows for the summer. www.myspace.com/mountkimbie

Tracklist:

01. Tunnelvision
02. Would Know
03. Before I Move Off
04. Blind Night Errand
05. Adriatic
06. Carbonated
07. Ruby
08. Ode to Bear
09. Field
10. Mayor
11. Between Time

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!