Mount Kimbie is the London-born brainchild of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos. The term “post-dubstep” is thrown around a lot in attempt to define the tracks these guys produce. They’re glitchy, swirling soundscapes of clinks, taps, boops, claps, wire-plucks, and crashes, topped with occasional ventures into falsetto harmonies of god-knows-what sentiments.
Crooks & Lovers is Mount Kimbie’s debut LP, following up 2009’s Maybes EP and Sketch On Glass EP. The album features 11 tracks of varying speeds, lengths, and audible sound processes. “Adriatic” is a 1:28 soft track of almost-acoustic hypnosis. “Field,” on the other hand, builds up with a minute and a half of cut-up crackling noise, and then shifts suddenly to a tropical swarm of layered ticks, guitar, and dove-sounds. And then somehow, after ten tracks of complex glitchy electronic music, the final track “Between Time” brings you back down to earth. It’s short and pounding and repetitive, but intoxicatingly soothing. Although not quite inline with the sounds on the rest of the album, Mount Kimbie successfully closes with this simple yet truly awesome track.
The whole album is full of seemingly intentional flaws, such as millisecond repeats, randomly places glitches, and spotty transitions. In effect, Crooks & Lovers becomes a record you can imagine being performed in front of you by quick moving hands on laptops and dials. Mount Kimbie reconciles the idea of simple and perfected computer beats with musicianship by the presence of these imperfections, reminding us that there are human geniuses behind these compositions.
Crooks & Lovers was released July 19, 2010, by Hotflush recordings.