With each successive move dubstep makes toward bass-drop bombast, there's been an equal if less prominent retreat in the opposite direction-- grainy and pared back, leaning on nuance instead of force, making subtly room-flooding sounds out of negative space and white noise. Another year or so of this, and "minimal dubstep" could go from a sub-descriptive side road into a full-on genre in itself. At that point, Mount Kimbie could be posited as the new genre's equivalent of microhouse favorites like Pantha du Prince or Justus Köhncke. Crooks & Lovers was the UK duo's big breakthrough, the crystallization of an approach that theorized how a bass-centered, midrange-heavy style could be pared back into ambient music. Cohort and collaborator James Blake has taken more of the shine in that department, but the melodic strides and the pervasive sense of loose-jointed tension on Crooks & Lovers managed to leave just as strong an impression over time.
But the point where minimalist becomes ephemeral is a dangerously easy one to cross, and it's hard to think of a better line-straddling example than the Carbonated EP. This release pairs a selection from Crooks & Lovers and two new Mount Kimbie originals with a trio of remixes from a couple of London bass-music fellow travelers and an artist from a (slightly) more far-flung if compatible minimal techno background. The last effort clicks the most, likely because it's Peter van Hoesen at the controls; the Belgian producer who won raves from aficionados for last year's canyon-deep Entropic City takes the bubbly, R&B-flecked "Carbonated" and flips the original's burbling rhythm into a Detroit-inflected pulse that has more groove and energy to it than anything else on the EP. That makes van Hoesen's remix something of an outlier, even if it's one of those outliers that also happens to be the best track out of six.
The other remixers work more closely alongside Mount Kimbie stylistically, but this time around their efforts feel a bit detached. While Airhead's remix of "Carbonated" has more of a direct connection to the source material than van Hoesen's-- making a primary element out of the distinctive propeller-whir hook that kicked off the original-- it spends too much time wafting along on little more than that murmuring throb, distant near-subliminal snares, and a simple bass kick that provides the least amount of momentum necessary to qualify this as a dance track. Klaus' remix of "Adriatic", meanwhile, takes the trickier route of building off a track without much to build on-- the original's only 88 seconds long, and worked more as a diversionary sketch than a highlight of Crooks & Lovers-- opting to slow its snippets of acoustic guitar and soul vocals to a funereal crawl that drags on for five and a half minutes of quicksand entropy.
The untouched Mount Kimbie tracks have their own pull, though, and "Carbonated"-- still one of the best cuts in the duo's arsenal-- is joined by a pair of unreleased tracks that give another couple of inroads into their sound. "Flux" rides on phased bell tones, liquid-trickle basslines, and hitching vocal yelps that intersect with hiccupy Brazilian cuicas, pulling itself up into a nice peak at the end. "Baves Chords" is a bit thinner-- hammer dulcimers and drum washes run through the same audio-stretching techniques that gave us the 800% slowed-down remix of Justin Bieber's "Baby", overlaid with glitchy harps, spare but cavernous handclaps, and warped, wordless chipmunk soul vocals. These tracks are both as wide-open in their rhythmic texture and their crackling warmth as the pair's best work, breathing and moving in ways that the remixes either fail to grasp or simply choose to circumvent. It's evidence that Mount Kimbie's knack for building sonic cathedrals out of empty spaces might just be more singular than you think.
