Fragment meets Mount Kimbie
The debut album by Mount Kimbie, Crooks and Lovers, is an expansive yet understated record. Lump them in with post-dubstep contemporaries Joy Orbison and James Blake if you like, in reality their unassuming sound is a broken love-letter to the capital in all its ramshackle, hyperactive beauty. Jehan Harding caught up with Dom Maker and Kai Campos after their set at Field Day to find out more.
How did you guys meet?
Dom: We met at university, we were in the same halls together. That was in South London at Elephant and Castle. I was studying film and video.
Kai: I was studying Artist Management. We used to walk to uni together sometimes, talk about music and stuff.
How long have you been producing?
D: Together about two and a half years. Prior to that, I’d done about five or six months. It’s easy to get into but it’s not easy to master. The amount of throwaway files we’ve got is unbelievable. It’s really difficult to keep the quality up. I just produce a lot of shit..it’s difficult.
Mount Kimbie – Field by Ragged Words
How does the partnership work? Is it like one of you will start with something?
D: We’ve always worked in that way. We wrote together [when] we were in London, and then I moved to Brighton and it’s become more sending things back and forwards. We don’t assign roles or anything like that.
K: We both do similar things I guess, share ideas. Quite often if we’re practising for a live gig, we’ll end up writing a lot and developing things.
I always think with music like Mount Kimbie’s, the environment is very important? Do you wanna get a more secluded studio?
D: We’re trying to find a space at the moment.
K: It doesn’t really need to be a studio, don’t need a 30k studio. Just need a space that isn’t my kitchen. We’ve moved around quite a lot, probably recorded in like I dunno, ten different places.
Like where?
K: Dom had this shitty old fucking room in Peckham. Just so small, horribly small.
D: Just taken up by the speakers, the monitors.
K: We wrote most of the first EP in there.
D: I think you can hear that.
K: Second one was done at my house, mostly in my kitchen. The album was all over kitchens and garages bedrooms and stuff.
What’s the story behind the album name, Crooks & Lovers?
K: I was listening to a podcast called the Hackney podcast. They usually centre around a specific theme. This one was about Night in Hackney taking about taxi drivers driving around, dropping people off. How they are kind of, these people that are involved so much in the city and they really don’t know they connect everybody. There was a line about delivering lover to lover and crook to crook. I thought it really summed up my experience of London, in terms of, I love the place dearly and I hate it as well. This crook and a lover aspect to it, same with everybody you meet in London, they’re crooks and lovers.
