Album Review Mount Kimbie - MK3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning

The production powerhouse of Mount Kimbie has been neatly divided into its constituent components on ‘MK 3.5’ - Dom Maker responsible for the first 12 tracks (‘Die Cuts’) and Kai Compos the latter 11 (’City Planning’). When viewed as a self-sufficient organism, Mount Kimbie are better understood: the logical, fastidious left brain can be attributed to Dom, while the out-of-box creative right brain is fuelled by Kai, but if you dig a little deeper into ‘MK 3.5’, multitudes of dichotomous layers begin to unravel and reveal themselves. On ‘Die Cuts’, Dom embraces both collaboration and collectivism, welcoming slowthai and Danny Brown on the ghostly ‘in your eyes’, chiselling both’s vicious, high-octane deliveries to utilise seldom seen reflective sides. ‘f1 racer’ revels in minimalism, perfectly cut by Kučka’s gossamer rhymes, where ‘if and when’ and ‘somehow she’s still her’ gracefully use ambient recordings to assert a channel-flicking, feet-up mood. Following a melody-driven first half, ‘City Planning’ embraces a more washed-out and overall splintered soundscape, seeing Kai toy with sparse, sawn-off synths and trickling drum movements. Conceptually and sonically looser, the album could lose listeners who are unprepared to venture into Kai’s more esoteric, unpredictable grotto. ‘MK 3.5’ is an often unwieldy and curiously warming project that sees both contributors embrace discomfort in their art.