In their new music video, Mount Kimbie aren’t seen. The video is instead an intimate home movie collage juxtaposed occasionally with images of Marilyn Monroe.
The children of the video aren’t Dominic Maker and Kai Campos, who comprise the critically-acclaimed electronica duo, but the children of photographer Mark Lebon.
According to Maker, with whom I spoke over the phone last week after he finished soundchecking for a 100-something capacity venue show at a seaside resort in Ramsgate, England, “[The music video] was directed by the father of Tyrone and Frank Lebon, who have released videos for our music. Their father listened and loved it, so he wanted to put together a collage of Frank and Tyrone. It’s more of a memory box.”
In or around September -- depending on “the powers that be,” Maker said -- Mount Kimbie will release a new album for which their other new single, “We Go Home Together,” serves as a teaser. The teaser features English electronic R&B singer/producer James Blake, with whom the duo has had a friendship since college. In fact, in their early years, Blake sang regularly for Mount Kimbie.
“James is someone we really respect and are inspired by. He feels like part of our family,” Maker said.
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It’s through both these close, familial relations and also through experimentation that Mount Kimbie continue to produce intelligent soundscapes with contemporary appeal. They’re not afraid to color outside of the lines -- “It’s a lot of mucking around … more just trial and error,” Maker explained -- and integrating found sounds into their compositions is one of many manifestations of this impulse.
“A friend of mine sent me a voice message. It was him walking on the beach in the south of England. It’s a beach that has rocks on it. He was walking on a rocky beach, and I took the sound of him walking and ran that through a midi controller and dropped it down a few octaves,” Maker described.
Whether it’s a voicemail in which the duo hears music or the extracted sound from a YouTube video, Mount Kimbie manage to find rhythm and tone in the otherwise mundane. And the beauty found in the everyday -- the turn from life to art -- is the ultimate form of artistic achievement.
Thanks to Casbah, Mount Kimbie headline Music Box on Wednesday, May 31. Get tickets here.
Rutger Rosenborg was almost a Stanford neuroscientist before he formed Ed Ghost Tucker. He now plays in the Lulls and makes music on his own when he's not writing. Follow his updates on Facebook or contact him directly.
