Mount Kimbie - Love What Survives
The Quietus
Mount Kimbie's third studio album, Love What Survives, is a creative continuation from 2013’s Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, taking risks and further exploring alienation, immersive production and the concept of roots. Initially the record can sound disjointed, with tracks jumping from one musical style to the next, but after a few listens it shines as a cohesive collection from some of London’s most exciting artists.
Kai Campos and Dominic Maker formed Mount Kimbie in 2008, while studying at London’s Southbank University. They released their debut EP at the start of 2009 and have since released four more EPs as well as their three albums. Love What Survives seeks to further widen the distance between the duo and 'post-dubstep' - the somewhat pretentious term they became synonymous with in the early years of their career. This album was three years in the making - sufficient time for intense creative development, which was amplified when Maker relocated to Los Angeles in 2016 while Campos remained in London.
For Maker, feeling alienated in his adopted hometown changed the course of his creative process, allowing for a fresh perspective that is clear throughout Love What Survives. 'Audition', for example, brings an early 2010s feeling as it flits between being an indie rock piece and wistful, electronic track sans vocals; 'Delta' sounds more homegrown, with an organic feeling reflecting the fact that the duo have expanded their touring band.
Both make for easy, nostalgia-inducing tracks perhaps strategically placed as means of recovery after heavy King Krule and James Blake features. While Maker’s move to California helped define the record’s sound, it’s clear that this band’s roots are still in London. Mica Levi also features on the album, alongside fellow Londoners James Blake and King Krule, and together they lend an immersive and personal quality.
'We Go Home Together' is bass heavy, testing the limits of Blake's vocal range; an organ creeps right through the track, making it extra ethereal and dissociative. Mica Levi features on the lullaby-esque ‘Marilyn’, perhaps the album’s greatest song, with otherworldly, gamelan-inspired instrumentation and rhythms giving a glimpse of where Mount Kimbie could be heading as they gain a fresh perspective. A similar style can be heard on ‘You Look Certain (I’m Not So Sure)’, which sounds good but arouses suspicion that the duo are creating a habit of latching onto a niche they suit until it wears out. Similarly, this album contains King Krule’s second collaboration with Mount Kimbie - 'Blue Train Lines' - but it doesn’t quite live up to the glory of his first outing with the duo (2013’s 'You Took Your Time').
Love What Survives, with its seductive beats and incredible production, is a strong record that finally cuts Mount Kimbie’s ties with ‘post-dubstep’. If they can avoid falling into routine, their post-post-dubstep future looks exciting.
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Thu Oct 19 16:19:41 GMT 2017Tiny Mix Tapes 90
Mount Kimbie
Love What Survives
[Warp; 2017]
Rating: 4.5/5
I can’t believe that this record didn’t already exist. Doubly so that the elevator-length description — “post-punk with electronics” — left any room for novelty whatsoever. Of course, it’s hard to communicate over the duration of an elevator ride that you intend to alter the very precepts of a genre. Sonically, Love What Survives is a sort of light-side answer to the churning industry of the never-quite-dead post-punk revival, akin in its position to the place of Mr. Mitch’s “peace dubs” among the broader, crueler landscape of UK grime. It’s too driving for dream pop, but too yielding for coldwave’s gloom. The drums, quite possibly programmed, remain a step less motorik than what the album art might suggest. Rather than incrementalism, this is the sound of musical progression by way of a headlong dive into something altogether new.
It took some time to hear what Mount Kimbie were doing. Crooks & Lovers, a wonderful document of its time, received wide acclaim and played a major part in ushering in what we faithful fondly recall as the “Majestic Casual” era. Despite a full three years passing in between, follow-up Cold Spring Fault Less Youth was a lot of the same. By then, that wasn’t nearly enough. While a new Mount Kimbie album doesn’t require a total vacuum of context, it seems to help if you can only vaguely recall what came before. Pressing play on Love What Survives, I remembered half of a track from Crooks & Lovers with the fondness given to everything new heard at 17; Cold Spring Fault Less Youth was a shadow of that, plus an inkling that there had been some ill-advised guitar incursions. With that in (or out of) mind, Love What Survives is a revelation — a summation of their work to-date without specific precedent for any individual track.
Although he only appears once, it would be irresponsible to discuss the album without mention of King Krule. Together with James Blake, he and Mount Kimbie form a sort of oligarchy over the domain of British melancholy. It’s that very note, struck with reckless sincerity by Krule and sublime clarity by Blake, that defines the record, allowing Mount Kimbie to explore whatever textural territory they desire safe in the knowledge that the town criers have shouldered the burden of narration. Their appearances are the only tracks for which vocal performances go beyond atmosphere or mantra, and for good reason: much beyond “Think about me everyday/ Forever” from “T.A.M.E.D.” or how the titular “You look certain (I’m not so sure)” would serve only to override, rather than augment, the lingering aftereffects of “I wanna fall forever if you ain’t by my side/ I wanna fall forever if you ain’t in my life” from “Blue Train Lines.”
This particular brand of middle-class British malaise is the result of absolute self-certainty confronted with a reality that undermines it. The feeling has a long history. Its scripture, Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers, begins thus:
My name is Charles Highway, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me. It’s such a rangy, well-travelled, big-cocked name and, to look at, I am none of these. I wear glasses for a start, have done since I was nine. And my medium-length, arseless waistless figure, corrugated ribcage and bandy legs gang up to dispel any hint of aplomb… But I have got one of those fashionable reedy voices, the ones with the habitual ironic twang, excellent for the promotion of oldster unease. And I imagine there’s something oddly daunting about my face, too. It’s angular, yet delicate; thin long nose, wide thin mouth - and the eyes: richly lashed, dark ochre with a twinkle of singed auburn… ah, how inadequate these words seem.
Love What Survives is a blank canvas for the Charles Highways of the world, a palette for expression and interpretation that offers just enough direction to welcome even those for whom words fail. It is, in the parlance of the times, a “mood.” To that end, it’s without flaw, impressing a specific and inescapable impression for its full runtime despite minimal explicit instruction. Define artistic success as you will, but it’s beyond question that Mount Kimbie have here translated, and therefore transmitted, an entire state of being.
Pitchfork 84
Mount Kimbie harness their command of detail—plus star turns from King Krule and James Blake—on a rhythm-driven album that feels less like electronic music and more like the work of a full band.
Mon Sep 11 05:00:00 GMT 2017The Guardian 80
(Warp Records)
In recent years, London duo Mount Kimbie have shrugged off their post-dubstep past and started to create songs that shepherd synth-heavy post-punk into the present day. On their third album, the band’s instrumentals radiate wit and warmth, like mid-80s New Order sloshing around in a sun-kissed sea – but it’s as a foil to some of Britain’s most idiosyncratic artists that Mount Kimbie really prove their mettle. Marilyn, their collaboration with Micachu, produces a masterly melange of outside-the-box melodies, James Blake’s hyper-emotional pipes meet creepily corrupted gospel on We Go Home Together, while the brilliant You Look Certain (I’m Not So Sure)’s chit-chatty vocals (courtesy of Andrea Balency, the band’s touring singer) recall post-punkers such as Vivien Goldman and the Raincoats. The record’s other highlight, Blue Train Lines, sees the duo reprise their hugely fruitful alliance with King Krule, artfully tempering the latter’s cracked howl with neat motorik drums and restrained synths that hover politely on the fringes of white noise.
Continue reading... Thu Sep 07 20:30:19 GMT 2017Drowned In Sound 70
It’s been four years since Mount Kimbie released their second album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth and put the shackles of the post-dubstep genre behind them. Although it’s a tag that’s still hard to shake, the album managed to deliver on the high expectations and acclaim surrounding their debut while simultaneously taking the duo in a more expansive, less restrictive direction. Love What Survives, their third full length and second on Warp, is a continuation of that journey, but this time it’s fuelled by a fascination with motorik rhythms and aided by some familiar collaborative faces.
The band described the writing of Love What Survives as a 'fascinating process that has changed us as a band'. From a quick glance at the track list though and a listen to the first minute or so of the opener, you’re probably wondering how. King Krule returns and once again on track two (though he does appear again later on the album) while the intro of intriguingly entitled opener 'Four Years and One Day' sees them in familiar sonic territory. However, as the track begins to take shape with a shuffling, metronomic beat and climbing bass line, it becomes clear that there are more influences at work here. More so too in the brilliant 'Blue Train Lines', where the buzzing electronic underbelly is goaded more and more by Krule's snarling, spluttering vocal until it relents in a heavily Krautrock influenced beat. Punctuated only by guttural shrieks, there’s something strangely joyous in the "six pounds in my pocket!" proclamation, particularly as the song reaches its raw and emotive crescendo.
Along with the Can/Faust-like rhythms, there are some post-punk echoes too as the album draws from a darker musical palette. There are the spectral shadows of 'Audition', where you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a distinctly Cure-shaped forest, and then the strange punk-groove of 'You Look Certain' – a sort of Delta 5/Electrelane mashup. The latter features Parisian singer Andrea Balency too, who has since been added to Mount Kimbie’s growing live band along with drummer Mark Pell of Micachu and The Shapes. Micachu appears too to provide another highpoint on the album with the quasi-transcendental 'Marilyn', where the tubular rhythms, creeping bass and deeply contoured sounds lull you into a blissful haze. It’s rich, melodic and textured throughout.
The James Blake cameos are not quite as rewarding (but then again I’ve never been completely won over) but there is still time for the immersive T.A.M.E.D – an acronym for the looping vocal 'think about me every day', which once heard is hard not to shake. There are parts of Love What Survives that you’ll want to dive straight back into again (like this track), and then others that are a little more ephemeral. One thing that is true throughout though: Mount Kimbie continue to broaden their scope and push the bounds of we can expect from them as a band.
Sat Sep 09 07:23:02 GMT 2017The Guardian 60
(Warp)
Since their acclaimed 2010 debut Crooks & Lovers, production duo Dominic Maker and Kai Campos, AKA Mount Kimbie, have gradually shaken off their “post-dubstep” label with tunes better suited to sticky-floored indie dives than pensive, 6am bus journeys. On this third album they’ve all but replaced their former glossy, fragmented electronica with live instrumentation, krautrock drums and vocals from James Blake, King Krule, Micachu and Andrea Balency. As tracks quickly pivot between ragged indie rock, melodic dance music and wistful, tinkly tunes, the record feels disjointed, but a few productions stand out as some of their most inventive yet, particularly the intricate weave of synth and organic sounds on James Blake collaborations We Go Home Together and How We Got By.
Continue reading... Sun Sep 10 07:00:30 GMT 2017