MK 3.5
Mount Kimbie finally mark their return to the scene, with a handful of intoxicated, abstract tracks under the title MK 3.5, most notably including in your eyes with slowthai and Danny Brown – potentially the dream collab of the year?
The ceaselessly creative English duo, comprised of Kai Campos and Dom Maker, played a crucial role in UK dubstep, future garage, and electronic scene, with their impressive catalogue of innovative music. This is the first time they’ve released an EP since 2019, and with ‘3.5’ in the title, here’s hoping MK 4 is on the way – this last 5 years has felt awfully long!
Excitingly, Mount Kimbie have linked back up with slowthai, following the incredible feel away from TYRON (also featuring James Blake), and now they’re throwing underground legend Danny Brown in the mix too for even more experimental raps.
The track begins with a haunting, lo-fi piano loop, as slowthai mutters into the mic, before venting into an emotionally charged, intimate verse. You can hear Mount Kimbie’s early dubstep foundations in the increasingly grimy production, as it builds cinematically around slowthai’s heavy rhymes.
His first verse ends with ‘I huff and puff, they all fall off, rise and shine, they done and dust’ before naturally blooming into something slightly more upbeat, but equally emotive. We also hear a standout hook from slowthai where he proclaims ‘Look, my friends kill my friends and truthfully it's killin' me’.
Danny Brown continues the tracks depressing narrative with the first line of his verse: ‘And your oxy the window to your soul’. It’s extraordinarily refreshing to hear Danny Brown’s cruelly downbeat raps on a track, as always – hopefully we won’t be waiting much longer for his next masterpiece.
Despite so many different inventive talents coming together on this melting pot of a song, it works wonderfully well, and is definitely one of the strongest hip-hop records of the year. As autumn approaches, what better time for some gloomy Mount Kimbie to add to the décor.
Check out the whole EP here, it’s definitely worth your 12 minutes.