About

Mount Kimbie harness their command of detail—plus star turns from King Krule and James Blake—on a rhythm-driven album that feels less like electronic music and more like the work of a full band.

While previous Mount Kimbie albums could bring to mind the meticulous and effervescent electronic music of Boards of Canada, Four Tet, and the like, Love What Survives churns and buzzes like post-punk or krautrock. Mixing circuitry and sweat, their drum machines stumble about like a hyperactive if unlearned drummer. Feeding back like overdriven guitars, the Korg MS-20 and Korg Delta synths that Maker and Campos used exclusively on the album elicit metallic tones reminiscent of plucked kalimbas, conjuring any number of Rough Trade bands from the early 1980s that moved from guitar-centered punk toward more exotic timbres. This jammy, hands-on approach gives instrumental tracks like “Audition” and “Delta” a rough-hewn urgency; they sound like they were hammered out by the band at their squat rather than fussed over on a computer screen.

Adding to that full-band feel is the stable of vocalists Mount Kimbie prominently feature here, including King Krule, Micachu, and their longtime colleague, James Blake. After the striking electronic amalgams they made with King Krule on Cold Spring—the standout tracks “You Took Your Time” and “Meter, Pale, Tone”—Mount Kimbie seethe and roar behind him on the roiling “Blue Train Lines.” Peals of feedback, wobbling bass, and relentless hi-hats sizzle around Archy Marshall’s strangulated growl as he reels off seedy images of razorblades, popping veins, and dead bodies. The song’s watery, inchoate elements don’t quite coalesce until the midpoint, when a furious drumbeat snaps the din into sharp focus and it all goes speeding toward a seething climax. Marshall’s performance is so visceral and intense that it’s hard not to imagine him thrashing on the floor of a mosh pit by the song’s end.

But the album’s most stunning vocal turn comes from Micachu on “Marilyn,” which might prove to be the most disarming song in either artist’s oeuvre. Built on an arpeggiated thumb-piano figure and a tapped ride cymbal that swings loosely over the rhythmic grid, it sounds like a lost Arthur Russell song that the Raincoats never got to record for Odyshape. Mica Levi’s deceptively flat intonation bears just enough vibrato that when the horns and melodica enter, the song turns ruminative and redemptive at once. It’s that kind of subtle detail that makes Love What Survives feel all the more substantial. The duo’s music was always full of the small details, but they now conspire toward something bigger. — (via Pitchfork)

↓
Label: Warp Records
Format: 2x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Europe
Released: Sep 8, 2017
Genre: Electronic, Hip Hop
Style: Leftfield, Abstract, Breakbeat
⦿

File under: Leftfield