If you’re planning a quiet night in tonight you should put your chicest non-committal party hat on and get down with Mount Kimbie, IS TROPICAL, Eliphino and Jessie Ware at ASOS.com’s All Nighter party – the world’s first global online house party – and you don’t even need to put pants on. The party kicks off at ASOS.com from 7pm AEDT tonight and will broadcast to the cover-free comfort of your own home a series of intimate live performances, interviews and a bunch of other fun stuff from some of the world’s leading electronic music
artists. To get you in the mood, we caught up with Laneway-bound production wizards Mount Kimbie to discuss the band’s collaboration process, tips for staying up all night, and their favourite albums of the year.
Collaborating so closely with another artist like you did with King Krule seems to be a rarity for you – was the collab an exceptional one off, or are there other artists you admire who you would also be interested in collaborating with? Yeah it was always something that we didn’t want to treat lightly. We certainly weren’t looking for it but I remember listening to Archy’s long before we started working and thinking that it would really work together in a natural way. Luckily he felt the same and it was a really easy and inspiring experience. I don’t think that comes around very often but there’s a couple of things in the pipeline that might work out. Would like to work with Jonwayne at some point in the future.
Along with James Blake you’re often credited as the leading influences of the Post-Dubstep movement, what do you feel about that label, and how it tends to be quickly thrown around in defining your music? I just think the connotations of the word dubstep are probably quite misleading as a description of our music to someone coming to it today. Around the time that us and James were just figuring stuff out it could been seen to make more sense and I haven’t got a better label for it. Although there can’t be many worse.
What are you most excited about your upcoming tour to Australia? Can we get our hopes up over seeing Archy Marshall playing with you onstage at Laneway Festival? Playing to Australian crowds is always a genuine pleasure. Obviously the festivals are going to be really exciting but we’re looking forward to the side shows as well. As for Archy jumping up – we’ll have to wait and see – hopefully the stages aren’t far apart and we don’t clash and we’ll take it from there!
What are some of the more unfortunate associations or perceptions that people make of the dance, dub step and post-dubstep scenes that you’d like to change? I’m not setting out to change anything in particular. As an artist I’m just expressing myself and you hope something positive comes out of that. Dance music can be the most forward thinking area of popular music but it can also be the most derivative – you hope you’re doing something closer to the former.
The Guardian described CSFY as “It sounds like the internal battle of someone losing their mind on the dancefloor while simultaneously panicking about the next morning’s sales target meeting.” What do you think of music journalism and criticism in general? Are reviews something you pay attention to? (Laughs) Well I hadn’t actually read that. Obviously it’s important for journalists to be able to express opinion and not want to be best mates with artists. At the same time the above quote is comically reductive. As if we sit around thinking like that! The music we make is 100% of what we’re able to do, so there’s not much of us saying “I’m worries about the sales target meeting”. I’m not sure they even exist at Warp. I’ve never been to one. I definitely read reviews – I think it’s a bit weird not to. I want it to make sense and have an affect on people and I care about how the wider world receives it but I think it’s important that all that stuff is separate to your creative decisions. If we were worried about sales target meetings we probably would have made a record very similar to our first one.
What are your favourite records released in 2013? Ah I’m always quite bad at this – I tend to leave the big records of any particular year until the following year so I’m just getting through 2012’s catalogue! I do love the King Krule record as I heard some it come together and we were working closely at the time. The Factory Floor record, Darkstar’s album, Connan Mockasin….I don’t know ask me next year!
You’re playing the ASOS All Nighter. What are your tips to surviving an all nighter? Stay hydrated, be somewhere with good music, take a five minute break to do some midnight stretches.
What’s next in store for Mount Kimbie? Do you have any ideas of how you may approach another album? Little things crop up, certain bits that we both think are cool but we don’t plan too much, not going to be touring as hard next year so after Laneway it’s back to finding a space and starting the third record – which is exciting. Not sure where we’ll be or what it will sound like!
Mount Kimbie headline dates:
Wed 29 Jan – Mount Kimbie @ Metro Theatre, Sydney
Thu 30 Jan – Mount Kimbie @ The Corner, Melbourne
Take a listen to Mount Kimbie’s fantastic 2013 release Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, released through Warp Records.
