With stages amongst forests, raw food trucks, frites and beer stands nestled in bushes, and a limited capacity, Dekmantel festival in Amsterdam last weekend felt like a summer garden party––but with really, really good music. Among the electronic line-up was UK duo Mount Kimbie. Along with others like NICOLAS JAAR and FOUR TET, the band has helped shape a particular genre of post-dub electronic music. The two met in college, and since their initial EPs and first album Crooks & Lovers have performed with James Blake and THE XX, worked with King Krule on an album, and, despite the oversaturated electronic music scene, created a sound that's completely their own. The driven beats, soft vocals, and playful guitars are the kind of thing you'd put on at a rooftop party in Brooklyn at 3 AM––even if the crowd has never heard it, they'll soon be nodding along.
We caught up with the duo about fresh fruit and "sad" crisps, the process of writing lyrics, and why electronic music has soul.
GRACE WANG: Fill in the blanks: Our name is_______and our music sounds like______.
KAI CAMPOS and DOMINIC MAKER: Our names are Kaiman and Doom, and our music sounds like a Mogwai record played backwards and at the wrong speed.
You guys met in college. Did you room together? What were your bedrooms like?
Same building, but a series of fire escapes apart. One room was a cell from an old psychiatric hospital. You could not hang yourself in there if you wanted to.
The 2013 album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth was your first time recording Kai's vocals. I'm quite interested in the lyric-writing: were there aspects of the songs that you thought were missing and needed to be filled in with words?
The songs mostly came quite fully formed. It's not done until it's done, and then you know. The lyrics are pretty dense but they were secondary; they're about a lot of things but really it's a break-up album.
You guys have always been really good at percussion production, but you brought in a new live drummer this album. Could you talk a bit about this addition?
We actually just recorded drums ourselves, which was fairly painful. We had a guy come and try a few things, but he was genuinely too good.
When I listen to Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, I feel like it's very much an album listen. How do you guys go about arranging a record in its final form?
We wrote enough songs to make up an album and then there was a small amount of time thinking about the order, which was a bit like a challenging jigsaw. Really, there was only one correct solution.
In that album, you focus more on live recording, drums, synths, and vocals. Electronic musicians sometimes get pigeonholed as less emotional because their music is made with the help of machines. Were you trying to combat that or go back to roots of band formation?
Nope, there's a lot of music made by live musicians which is completely dead a