- Dom Maker and Kai Campos go their own ways, together, on a quirky and illuminating double album.
- Mount Kimbie has always been more than the sum of its parts. That's what made 2017's Love What Survives such a triumph—a blend of electronic music, Krautrock, pop and R&B that could have been a mess in the hands of a less capable duo. So what happens when you dismantle the seamless group into its constituent parts? MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning, whose very title implies that it is a transitional album, a stop on the way to somewhere else.
This record—presented as a double-LP but clocking in at less than an hour—reflects the divisions that have fundamentally changed the duo since their last studio release. Dom Maker now lives in LA and is a frequent collaborator with James Blake, while Kai Campos stayed on in London and took up DJing, going down a techno wormhole as part of a deepening friendship with Actress and recording a DJ-Kicks in the process. These differences define the record, which may as well be from two completely unrelated people, if not for some shared stylistic tics. Maker's Die Cuts is a hip-hop and R&B-focused who's-who of underground rappers and singers, while Kampos' City Planning features the most straight-up dance floor music the group has ever released under its name. Like most band-members-go-solo projects, the music is as illuminating as it is uneven.
Die Cuts is a selection of bite-sized rap vignettes that portrays Maker as some kind of Dilla or Madlib, letting his understated beats shine beneath the charismatic vocalists. Some of these songs are genuinely great: Danny Brown and slowthai's team-up on "In Your Eyes" shines brightly over a mischievous instrumental, while slowthai steals the show again on the goofy "Kissing," which carries itself with a Y2K swagger. Some tracks have classic Kimbie vibes, like the richly recorded drums on "Deities Encore" or the piano and scratching fretboards of "End Of The Road," which features a James Blake-style pitched-up vocal. (Blake himself appears on the lovely but inconsequential "Somehow She's Still Here.")
Maker's half floats by in a pleasant haze of classy instruments and boom-bap drums, while Campos' City Planning offers a little more to sink your teeth into. Completely instrumental and largely rooted in techno, this disc was apparently inspired by a growing interest in Detroit electronic music history, which you can hear in the Mills-esque arpeggios of "Zone 3 (City Limits)" or "Quartz," which sounds like a Motor City producer who was raised on Euro mnml instead of Minimal Nation. Again, glimpses of Mount Kimbie appear here, including on the jazzy feel of "Satellite 9," which is the most Warp Records thing they ever put out. But it's only "Zone 2," a fantastic, presumably Actress-inspired tribute to Detroit that feels as inventive as the group's work together. At five minutes, it's also the only track that really feels like a fully-fleshed composition rather than a neat sketch or exercise.
Still, Mount Kimbie's best music has always been about the little details, the pops of colour and texture that could turn the merely pleasant into the beautiful, the loping into the propulsive. MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning has glimpses of this style, but lacks the alchemy that makes the group's music feel magic. It's a good album instead of a great one (long-time readers of RA might get a hint of this from the LP's title), one that points at future directions that could be bolstered by the duo's ability to finish each other's tracks or flesh out their ideas. Together, Dom Maker and Kai Campos are something truly special. Apart, they still sound pretty damn talented, which makes this diversion a welcome one as the group work towards their next grand statement.
TracklistDie Cuts
01. dvd feat. choker
02. in your eyes feat. slowthai & Danny Brown
03. f1 racer feat. kučka
04. heat on, lips on
05. end of the road feat. Reggie
06. somehow she’s still here (feat. James Blake
07. kissing feat. slowthai
08. say that feat. Nomi
09. need u tonight
10. if and when (feat. wiki)
11. tender hearts meet the sky feat. Keiyaa)
12. a deities encore feat. liv.e
City Planning
01. Q
02. Quartz
03. Transit Map (Flattened)
04. Satellite 7
05. Satellite 9
06. Satellite 6 (Corrupted)
07. Zone 3 (City Limits)
08. Zone 2 (Last Connection)
09. Zone 1 (24 Hours)
10. Industry
11. Human Voices