interview + photos / Monet Lucki
Mount Kimbie is one of our favorite music making duos consisting of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos. These English gents have been making music since around 2008 and released their debut album Crooks & Lovers in 2010. We are still listening to that album. Thankfully the band released second album, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, this year so there is something else all of us can become obsessed with.Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is out now on Warp Records and the band is currently on tour. Monet Lucki got a chance to take some photographs and sit down with the guys while they were in the states.
Where do you get inspiration for your sound samples from? Specifically when asking that I am wondering in terms of environmental influences or if there are certain sounds such as the subway tracks or any sort of ambient sounds that you are drawn to?
Dom: So, yes in terms of inspirations for samples, I think its a tough one because we don’t really tend to think about it in terms of searching for certain environments to find certain sounds. You know its just little fragments of things that you hear when you’re walking around or when you’re going through sound packs and things like that. I think that a lot of the issue with crafting a new idea is going through live segments of audio and then finding the samples in there that can be used as the melody. I guess the discovery is quite spontaneous, it isn’t thought out which is what makes it exciting for us.
So do you have an archive of sounds that you save randomly and then you go back in and compile once you start producing a song?
Dom : Yeah I mean I think the sounds we want to work with change quite a bit depending on the record so in a lot of ways we’ll start again and build up a new catalog of sampling or sounds that we’ve recorded ourselves.
Kai: I think if you’re into sound your ears are always kind of turned on for those kind of things. If you’re just watching a film, or in the street, or you know listening to the radio you tend to keep a large catalog throughout the years of sounds that get your imiganation going. The sounds don’t necessarily need to be used in the song but its just lots and lots of samples collected over the year that interests us.
“Baves Chord” is one of my favorite tracks of yours. Everytime I listen to that song I think of the deep song and creatures of the ocean I just have to ask if that track had anything to do with that.
Kai: It can be. It’s not like we set out to create the sound based on the sea. Its kind of got the effect of the waves crashing, with natural rains of sounds such as pebbles. We didn’t have that much of a visualization with the sound for that song.
What are the benefits of working as a duo and the challenges that come with this?
Kai: I think in the early days certainly if you just are starting out you feel when youre working and what you’re doing is not 100 percent your own, it feels easier to push it and promote to other people. Because its not all about you, it feels more natural to be able to show people what you’re doing from that point of view. There’s a gap between what you’re doing and what someone else is doing. It is a bit of the unknown and things happen that you just wouldn’t expect to happen. You end up pushing each other in different directions and elevating what you’re doing individually. But for both of us its been quite rare that we’d want to collaborate with other people because I think that most of the time, especially with electronic music, it’s not something you want to talk about too much or have to explain. So our relationship in the working environment doesn’t involve a lot of verbal explanation. We still tend to work on a lot of things ourselves and then it becomes a more collaborative process after the initial idea.
Didn’t you guys work on a few tracks with James Blake? How was your experiencing working with him?
Kai: We worked together a lot, more on live set a few years ago when we were starting out. We did a lot of shows together the three of us began sharing ideas musically. We wrote bits and pieces together but we never finished it. Theres one track in particular that we’d like to finish what we started together. But it is just a matter of time and time management, maybe this summer. It is rare. I think every time you add another person in, the communication has to be even stronger without verbal communication which makes it more difficult. For instance with Archie ( James Blake) again it was something we didn’t have to talk too much about in the studio we were just recording and messing around with ideas.
What are some future projects you have coming up?
Dom: We are at a really good time, in terms of writing we just finished this record. We’d like to release something early next year. Maybe we are looking at people to remix songs with our current record. We’d like to work with Archie again and maybe some things with Micachu from Micachu and the Shapes. But at the moment really, just for this period of time, it’s all about getting back on the road and touring.
Kai: We’re going to making some music with some recordings from space.
Dom: Yeah we’ve got some NASA recordings of sounds from space and hopefully work a bit with that. I’d like to say though at the moment it’s just mainly focusing on touring and hopefully we’ll write while we’re on the road. We haven’t exactly worked out what we want to do next but we want to do something soon.
What musicians inspire you the most?
Dom: I think the first Micachu album was a real inspiration to us. I mean really anything that she puts out we’re really into, as well as Actress. I get inspired by James Blakes’ music. It is just nice knowing him so well that when I listen to his music, I hear it in a different way then most other music. So we have quite a wide range but to be honest we try and cut ourselves off from listening to too much stuff, so when were writing we’re just focusing on what were doing.
Kai: I think Dom is talking about inspiration we share together in terms of music that has pushed us.. I don’t know we do especially with this record cut ourselves off more and make it our own little world in the studio which is enjoyable. Now were going back and trying to listen to other things again . Archie’s album he put out last year has been really inspirational for me.
What visuals come to mind when producing your tracks?
Kai: Fairly abstract things. Sometimes a song will take form in my head in terms of not something I can see but something I know where the space fills out and where it’s going. Again its not specifically colors but it is a visual thing just very abstract and much more about space. That’s about as visual as it gets.
Where did the name Mount Kimbie come from?
Kai: It really its just an acclimation of two things that were in a playlist we were listening to which if you’re bored enough you can figure it out. Its not that cryptic.
Is your music generally expressive of specific relationships with people or is it more about emotion?
Kai: We’ve never really wrote about a specific situations. We start with the goal of wanting to achieve so much more than talking about specific situation. With music you’re able to express things that you can’t say with words which is why we dont touch on that, if we can talk about more than that.
What are your thoughts on Burial?
Kai: Yes, good music. When his first album came out it was worshiped by people in the UK in terms of it got a lot of attention, and really good reactions. At the time it seemed like quiet subtle music I guess, that could break through in that way. It was quite an inspiration in a sense that you could tell that people were interested in his music. His second album was really good.
What city are you guys most excited about touring in the states?
Kai: What is really nice about traveling here is the variety of places. Everywhere very much has its own identity but is held together by a thread of what is America. Its kind of interesting in that way, so going from place to place is quite enjoyable. We wouldn’t want to stay in one place for too long. But there are definitely places we have more friends like New York and San Francisco. But there are some places we’ve never been to like Detroit, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. So it will be great to see some new places.
