Visionary British outfits, Mount Kimbie, confirms their fourth studio album, The Sunset Violent, releasing via Warp on April 5. The band also shares a brand-new single, “Fishbrain”, with an accompanying video directed by Tegen Williams, who the band worked with previously on the video for “Blue Train Lanes (ft. King Krule).” The video centers around a dystopian tale of an underground fish-scale textile factory and the dull repetitive routine of the toil of everyday life and the labor of industry.
The Sunset Violent picks up where 2017’s Love What Survives left off, combining modern indie, shoegaze and electronica into another highly unique and forward-thinking LP from one of London’s most seminal contemporary bands. The album was written in California’s Yucca Valley, a scant Western town with a history of alleged UFO sightings before being finished in London. The desert’s fantastic, auburn-tinged tones and scant Americana landscape can be heard across each of the album’s nine tracks, marrying perfectly with the album’s abstract storytelling and cutting-edge songwriting to create another classic Mount Kimbie record.
“Fishbrain” is about a gloomy factory setting that deals with monotonous labor; it looks like a studio filled with soulless animators in a warehouse. Either that, or it looks like a publishing company; there are shots of newspapers in the video. The lyrics accompany this setting with lyrics like “I drift alone in the shallows” and “Working outside, living outside / I feel connection outside.” It’s worth noting that the lyrics are sung in this monotonous attitude that can barely be heard. It compliments the apocalyptic setting the video has. It’s depressing, and it never changes. “There’s no air to breathe, I choke / I can taste the industry.” In the animation, the setting changes to that of a coal mine. The people working there are struggling to get by.
The Sunset Violent Tracklisting
1. The Trail
2. Dumb Guitar
3. Shipwreck
4. Boxing (Feat. King Krule)
5. Got Me
6. A Figure In The Surf
7. Fishbrain
8. Yukka Tree
9. Empty And Silent (Feat. King Krule)