Mount Kimbie today release two new tracks to be taken from their forthcoming double album MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning - “Satellite 9”, produced by the group’s Kai Campos and “DVD (feat. Choker)”, produced by Dom Maker. MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning, is out 4 November via Warp Records on limited edition clear vinyl, black vinyl, CD and digital formats.
Alongside this Mount Kimbie have announced two works - one representative of each side of the album. For Dom Makers’ Die Cuts, Mount Kimbie and acclaimed creative Tyrone Lebon reunite after working together on Mount Kimbie’s debut album, Crooks & Lovers. Tyrone has since become one of the most famed photographers of this generation shooting fashion campaigns for Bottega Venetta, Miu Miu, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton, and Celine. It is the first music project Lebon has worked on since directing Frank Ocean’s “Nikes.”
Soundtracked by Dom Maker, Lebon began filming “Die Cuts” soon after the end of a significant relationship. Following a desire to reflect on the nature of intimacy, loss and memory, he traveled to film couples and individuals from different countries, who were open to sharing the typically-private intimacies of their lives. The film is a 15min 35mm looping projection that has been scratched, painted, had shapes cut out, and new ones stuck back in. Lebon commissioned an engineer to customize a number of original die-cutting machines so that specific pieces of the animated frames could be cut out and interchanged with one another. Die Cuts is the result of over three thousand hours of analogue post-production processes.
The piece will be a film installation shown at the prestigious Frieze Gallery in London from Friday November 4th until Saturday November 5th. The film will also be available to watch online at die-cuts.com from November 4th and premiered in LA.
For City Planning, Mount Kimbie have also commissioned world-renowned New York based sculpture artist Tom Shannon (MoMa, The Whitney NYC, Centre Pompidou, Chateau La Coste) to build a new sculpture “Four World Set”. With art direction by Tyrone’s brother Frank Lebon (Dior, Off White, Palace, Diesel), Tom Shannon has built a series of giant reflective spheres. Each sphere is sixteen feet in diameter and collectively, the installation reaches approximately thirty two feet in height. Within the piece you can see a pyramid appear briefly through the compounded reflection, a round quartet that plays with the light of its surroundings. They will be on display at St Giles Square in Central London, from Monday 31st October. “Four World Set” will subsequently travel worldwide to new locations.
On Friday 4th, Mount Kimbie will be celebrating the release of their new album next to Tom Shannon’s sculptures at new venue The Lower Third.
“Satellite 9” is a gliding electro-inflected instrumental - clipped hi-hats merging with a floating lead synth-line. It is a looping, elliptical track that takes Campos’ hardware driven sounds into a truly artful space: a recurring theme on City Planning. “DVD (ft. choker)”, highlights Maker’s eye for curation on Die Cuts - an album brimming with phenomenal collaborators selected by Maker. Choker provides one of the standout guest turns on Die Cuts - his voice becoming the perfect foil to Maker’s layers of winding samples. Duval Timothy appears on the track playing Piano, alongside backing vocals from Sampha.