British Duo Mount Kimbie Shows Musical Versatility on Love What Survives
On September 8th British duo Mount Kimbie, consisting of college friends Dom Maker and Kai Campos, released their third studio album, Love What Survives, on Warp records label. The album follows a strong single release “Blue Train Lines” which had extremely positive reviews and includes features from artists such as James Blake and Andrea Balency. There are a number of influences on the album including Hip-Hop, Jazz, Post-Punk, IDM, and R&B. The album as a whole is not too long sitting at 11 tracks and totaling about 39 minutes.
The opening track, “Four Years and One Day” starts out slow and carries an otherworldly melody and eventually builds up to a post-punk influenced track. Its slow build up is a fitting introduction to the album and beckons the listener into the rest of the album.
The next track is the popular single, “Blue Train Lines” and features English musician King Krule. The song opens with King Krule rapping but makes a transition towards more of an electronic influenced post-punk kind of sound. King Krule’s vocals also help to add to the punk influence especially towards the end of the track.
The following track, “Audition” is entirely instrumental and slows down the tempo of the album. It makes use of a lighter more atmospheric kind of tone and leads nicely into the next track, “Marilyn,” which features the artist Micachu. “Marilyn” continues the slower tempo set, but has more of a jazzy vibe to it. Micachu’s vocals and the thick bass line add to the jazz elements on the track.
One highlight of the album, “You Look Certain (I’m not so sure)” comes a couple of tracks later, and features the artist, Andrea Balency. The song is more upbeat than some of the previous tracks on the album and makes use of atmospheric vocals and again brings back the post-punk vibe that was present earlier in the album.
Another highlight comes on the final track of the album “How We Got Here” and features the singer James Blake. The song has a much slower tempo and has R&B-laced feel to it that is exemplified by the vocals of James Blake. The piano and reverbed drums help give this song a kind of dreamy feel to it as well.
Overall this is a stellar album from Mount Kimbie and really shows off the musical versatility of the duo. The album has a wide range of musical influences and the featured artists on the album help make this a solid effort from Mount Kimbie.
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