Even the songs without lyrics, Mount Kimbie’s music can express emotions simply through sound. It’s the kind of music that you can listen to when you’re looking back at everything or when you want to think about nothing at all. It’s music that I would want as a soundtrack of my life, erasing all the noise around me. Even the uptempo songs or the ones with heavy drum beats can make you feel calm like the feeling you may get being at home. And on top of that, they’ve collaborated with two of my favorite artists, King Krule and James Blake. A band I’ll be listening to forever.

With those sounds, are the most stunning music videos. There are truly personal aspects, such as the use of home videos and photos, the character's face often taken up close, and the colors soft as though it was taken on film. My personal favorites are "Delta" and "Carbonated”. 

Following the release of their third album “Love What Survives” and before their much anticipated tour kicking off, with their first stop in Japan, Mount Kimbie shared with block.fm a playlist of songs that inspired the album. 

Mount Kimbie - "MARILYN FT. MICACHU"

Mount Kimbie: Mica came to the studio, listened to a few things we were working on, heard what was probably a one minute version of this and said she’d have some ideas for it. We listened to it and Mica wrote and recorded a tonne of vocal takes really quickly. Again this then led how we wrote the song. Her vocal delivery and lyrics on this are one of my favourite things on the record.

Robert Wyatt - “Age Of Self"

Kai Campos: Robert Wyatt is an interesting guy because he has been able to make a lot of different music in his career and does not get pigeon-holed. This track – and the whole album called Old Rottenhat – is appealing because it’s very dry and direct and very basic in a way, with the keyboard sounds and drum machines and the bass guitar. Little bits of songs get you thinking and stay with you for a while. Sometimes they come out in the things you end up doing. Of course it’s the artist that you like, but for me it’s more about small moments in songs – they’re something to start off.

Apple And Three Oranges - "I’ll Give You A Ring (When I Come If I Come)"

Maker: I think the vocal melodies in that kind of music definitely resonates with some of the stuff that we do. It inspires us to capture moments in it. It’s all quite simple instrumentation, but still relatively interesting and abstract. But also the actual message in the lyrics is sort of simple and tells a story. I think it’s a really nice story about hope with very honest music backing it.

Campos: Trying to be simple is something that is appealing. In the past it’s been more like reaching forward to slightly obscure songs, to make something interesting out of how much you can obscure the song. Now it goes right the opposite way: there’s no obscure with any kind of effects that would get in the way. It was a choice between two paths – the decision was to go with the most concise and simple one. Over the course of the whole record, it’s just for yourself to be bolder. Going with the simple way sometimes makes things more interesting.

Suicide - "Cheree"

Campos: I was trying to rip off this sound, because I really love the drum machine sound with the high pitches and the dum-dum-dum-dum.

Maker: Initially, when Kai was sending a few ideas way long ago, I didn’t connect with the sounds he was going for. But then, over time, his influences made way more sense. We’re both listening to quite a lot of soul stuff. But this stuff was using these particular drum machine sounds. There was a night when Kai played me all these Suicide albums and I got excited about the fact that it was the same drum machines basically but used in a very different way that had a lot more momentum and was always celebrated – more than just being a backing.

Sonic Youth - "Reena"

Campos: This has been in my head for years and years and years. This particular sound! Again, it’s very dry. Flat. I normally don’t write songs with a guitar, so it was a challenge for me to incorporate these sounds into our own. And it was also like: Is this okay to put it on a Mount Kimbie album? You decide: it is! That makes the world of what we’re doing slightly bigger. Just that decision to run with it. Disconnecting yourself from the little house you built yourself into when you’re in a band. You wanna feel like you’re learning something new. I’m not a massive Sonic Youth fan, it’s just every now and again something that it really hits me.

Kai Campos and Dom Maker

Mbongwana Star feat. Konono No. 1 - "Malukayi"

Maker: It’s the floaty quality. For me it’s more about the melodies than the rhythms, but it’s interesting hearing what the different prominent instruments are in different countries. Africa is such a big place and has many different aspects in their cultures. We had Oumou Sangare from Mali who came into our radio show and we did a live set. It was brilliant. There’s so much diversity in that sound. I like the sort of fun in the music, which is always nice.

Campos: I guess there’s a link between African music in general and European dance music, especially in the functionality of it. With this track for instance, it’s not about the celebrity of the band on stage. It’s not about lead guitars. It’s all of the people contributing to repetitive parts that fit together and create something bigger rather than people doing guitar solos. It’s a very different approach.

The Funkees - "Akula Owu Onyeara"

Maker: I think it’s interesting that obviously a lot of music in Africa in a certain time was totally looking across at Europe and America and trying to essentially take from a lot of that kind of music. This song shows how they were bringing the electric guitar and synths to the melodies.

Campos: We had similar approaches on some tracks of our new album where we wouldn’t put the kick drum on to the one. I would say, the Funkees are comparable to some Paul Simon stuff. The kick drum fills the space where the snare usually should be in traditional Western music. It feels different in the way you move to it.

Arthur Russell - "That’s Us/Wild Combination"

Campos: He was big in using drum machines and the cello in an interesting way. The song is very powerful and taking away the impressiveness of modern equipment and drum machines – and it’s still good. It means there’s something else there to highlight. That’s why the Korg drum machine DDD1 which we used a lot – and which is a real piece of shit sounding thing – was so appealing, because you can get the rhythm just down with this. There’s no way to go from here with this rhythm track, you can’t make it sound great, so you start writing a song on top of that – and then put the snare all over the drums. It’s just a very 80s disco drum machine – it doesn’t sound good by today’s standards, but you can let the song do the work by just using these kind of sounds. You create more space for the song with this.

William Basinski - "Melancholia"

Maker: William Basinski is the person to look at for ambient piano sounds. It’s very melancholic – obviously – but it’s just one loop and I think in that moment, when there’s no drums, no other instrumentation apart from the piano, there’s a bit of time for reflexion. It gives you a little break. The space in it makes it so reflexive. Because literally, the music is just a loop which is slowly degrading over the time. You can literally scan through the track and it doesn’t really change. It has something therapeutic about this hypnotic element to it.

Soft Hair - "Lying has to stop"

Maker: Soft Hair has always been a band whose music we enjoy. This is very hard-wrenching melodies. It just hits the spot everytime. And the video is pretty special as well. It’s just something on its own planet – you’ve got to watch it!

For those who want to see Mount Kimbie, you can catch them on October 7th at Asagiri Jam '17 and on October 9th for their headline show at Shibuya WWWX. 

Written by Amy

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