Album Review: Mount Kimbie - Cold Spring Fault Less Youth

No-one expects anything by-the-book from Mount Kimbie. Over the last three years, the British production duo of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos have tried their best to take R&B and strain it through a filter of hazy, viscous composition, creating something that bridges styles pretty succinctly. Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is their second full-length album (backed up by a few EPs and remixes), and it's a bit of an untamed animal.

First off, Mount Kimbie's production skills have done nothing than improve since 2010's Crooks & Lovers. While that album resided comfortably in futurebeat territory (their Australian tour with PVT might serve as a good analogue), this most recent album sees them kick down the borders of their own invention and really fill as much space with otherworldly sound as possible. It's both a good and bad thing. You Took Your Time (featuring Rick Astley doppelganger King Krule) is a beautifully intamite piece of R&B, wonked up slightly by synths and a surprisingly live-sounding drum track. But then there's tracks like Break Well, which starts off with a great atmospheric build, which all of a sudden shifts gear into a great retro electro-rock aside… before suddenly screeching to a halt. Too many of the great lines on this album are stopped before their time, which ends up being the biggest hindrance to the album as a whole.

The greatest strength, by far, of Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is the live percussion tracking: Maker and Campos have found the perfect sweet spot between live drums and electronic sampling, the interplay lending so much body to their work. This, in turn, lends itself to epic soundscape building – Lie Near might be the best example of that ­– but it's just a shame that they come to an end so suddenly.