Mount Kimbie
Crooks and Lovers
(Hotflush)

And now it makes sense. There’s a line of influence and friendship that can be traced around Mount Kimbie. It runs: Scuba -> Mount Kimbie -> James Blake -> The XX. That’s a movement from serious, brawny dubstep and techno to indie guitar music with beatsy bits. Mount Kimbie sit nicely in the middle, joined by James Blake, another mediator between the spheres of clubby electronic music and dour rock music. On Crooks and Lovers, Kimbie continue offering to our ears their admixture of mic’d instruments and computer circuitry. They do some striking work with the two elements. But we knew that would be the case—the UK duo have been one of the most consistent producers of electronic music over the past year.

One of Mount Kimbie’s best moments to date is their remix of The XX’s ‘Basic Space’—a mix which somehow made the space between that band’s few notes even greater, a mix which somehow made it even heavier with regret and longing.



I don’t think there’s anything as focussed and yearning on Crooks and Lovers, although it is all as warm and inviting as this. The duo layer their songs with what’s usually described as ‘texture’—bits of ‘real world’ stuff, like the crackle of dust on a record player, the echo of a voice in a room, the inconsistent slap of handclaps—stuff which reminds us of banal, endearing, everyday moments. Where some electronic artists prefer the aesthetic of a clinical operation and others the sci-fi moonscapes of oscillating synthesisers, Kimbie prefer intimacy and familiarity. On ‘Would Know,’ the first few seconds is the sound of loud chatter in a bar, immediately establishing a familiar sense of place. Crashing in over the top is the production itself, a loping, looping piece of dub-techno ambience. It’s pillowy and fleecy. Sheets of static rain down in fine mist—recalling earlier, German practitioners of dub electronics like Farben and Pole.

Vocally, the album works with lyrics not as recognisable words but as syllables and units of sound. Abstracted from anything as prosaic as sentences or phrases, the duo drip yips and moans all over their songs—what this does so effectively is capture the emotion and affect of a single, simple utterance. It’s striking how much can be ‘said’ without words. This is a style familiar from some of their immediate predecessors, like Burial and Four Tet. Indeed, at its best, Crooks and Lovers sounds like Burial and Four Tet collaborating (or, rather, an alternate version of that, given that pair already have collaborated). On ‘Before I Move Off,’ we hear Burial-style atmospherics and vocal splicing married to the glitch’d music box melodies of Four Tet. Crooks and Lovers also recalls another of the best releases to pull of this beautiful mash of electronic, acoustic and vocal elements—Prefuse 73’s One Word Extinguisher.

Like that album, Kimbie work here in fairly short sketches. Crooks and Lovers runs for 35 minutes. Where many electronic works unfurl over seven or eight minutes, Kimbie don’t have a song longer than roughly four minutes here. This gives the album a real sense of motion and variety, but it also seems to lack a central, anchoring song—something that would hold the album in place for, say, five or more minutes.

Obviously this is not simply a question of length but of delivering a solid, jawdropping production—something like “Sketch on Glass” or “Serged” from their Sketch on Glass EP. Along with a lot of other producers influenced by dubstep, Kimbie seem hesitant to drop into anything too 4/4 and house sounding. One recent exception is the often impressive Trinagulation LP from their label boss, Scuba—on “Minerals,” that album finds its step with a nimble, clitter-clatter rhythmic track, replete with a heavy bassline that just keeps tumbling down the stairs.

Of course it’s ridiculous to hold against Mount Kimbie that they are not Scuba—aside from being, yes, different people, they also have completely different aims. Scuba is a heavyweight DJ in Berlin with the ability to deliver punishing live sets which mix techno, house and dubstep. Mount Kimbie, on the other hand, are enfolded within the UK indie scene, remixing the likes of Foals and The XX. But the point isn’t that Kimbie need a Scuba-sounding track on here, but that Crooks and Lovers—for all its wonderful sound design and charm—lacks a pivotal moment where the whole set ratchets up a gear.

In that sense, Crooks and Lovers is ripe for home listening. It does that dual volume thing wonderfully well: played quietly, it’s a mesh of beautiful melodies and vocal sounds filled with longing; played at three times the volume, it takes on greater force as the basslines and rhythmic production comes to the fore.

Ben Gook