Mount Kimbie - MK 3.5: City Planning / Die Cuts (2LP) - Clear Vinyl

Mount Kimbie’s split LP feels like a clean, deliberate reset. Released in 2022 on Warp, MK 3.5: City Planning / Die Cuts breaks the duo’s world in two and lays out the pieces in sharp light. Kai Campos takes City Planning for a spin through spare, machine-cut rhythms. Dom Maker moves in the other direction with Die Cuts, a collage of short-form ideas, voices, and bruised soul textures shaped by his years in Los Angeles studios. It reads like a postcard exchange between old friends who grew up in the same scene and then followed different paths.

City Planning lands with the kind of precision that comes from time behind the decks. Campos has been known to lean into DJ culture and you can hear it. The drums are clipped and dry. The bass sits low and clean. Melodic fragments recur like signage on a late bus ride, and the edits feel surgical. There’s warmth in the corners, though. Tiny sample tails and room noise peek through and keep the grid from turning cold. Fans who loved the duo’s early fondness for negative space will sink right into this half. It is less about big melodic arcs and more about small architectural details. Think of it as a set of carefully plotted blocks that reveal new angles each time the needle drops.

Die Cuts answers with loose threads and a very human pulse. Maker stacks quick sketches next to hazy, full songs and lets the seams show. This side feels like sitting in on a beat session where half-finished ideas become the point. Chopped vocal bits and dusty keys drift in, then get yanked away for a new scene. It carries the spirit of the LA beat scene in its pacing and palette, but it still sounds like Mount Kimbie. There is a soft-focus melancholy running through the samples, even when the drums hit hard. A handful of vocal cameos add flashes of personality without turning the record into a features reel. It feels intimate, almost diaristic, like a folder of ideas someone decided to share rather than polish to oblivion.

The split makes sense in the wider arc of Mount Kimbie. Crooks & Lovers set them up in 2010 as post-dubstep minimalists with a keen sense of texture. Cold Spring Fault Less Youth and Love What Survives stretched into band-oriented shapes and sharpened their songwriting. After five years away from albums, this return doesn’t try to thread every era into a single statement. It lets each member chase a focus. That clarity might be the most exciting thing here. You can map the duo’s old chemistry between the lines, but the contrast is the point.

On a turntable the concept clicks even harder. The MK 3.5 vinyl gives each mood its own physical space, so flipping from City Planning to Die Cuts becomes a ritual. Side one tightens the room. Side two opens the windows. The mastering plays to both sides of the coin, with the low end on City Planning stepping out clean and the midrange on Die Cuts holding onto the grit that makes those samples breathe. If you collect Mount Kimbie vinyl, this is the copy that will get regular spins, because the sequencing rewards a full pass instead of a playlist skim.

Reception was strong across the board. Notable outlets like Pitchfork and The Guardian honed in on the split decision and praised how clearly the two halves express different instincts from the same core identity. Longtime fans traded favorites and argued over which side hits harder, which is exactly the kind of conversation-starter a project like this should be. For me, the answer changes with the hour. Late night favors Campos’s taut designs. Weekend afternoons drift toward Maker’s loose, sun-faded cuts.

If you’re hunting for MK 3.5: City Planning / Die Cuts vinyl, act sooner rather than later. Mount Kimbie albums on vinyl tend to vanish for a spell, and this one rewards a front-to-back sit-down. It also plays well next to earlier pressings, so if you want to buy Mount Kimbie records online and fill in the shelf, this is a smart anchor. I’ve even seen copies pop up at my local Melbourne record store, a nice surprise for anyone digging through racks of vinyl records Australia-wide. However you find it, the record captures two artists looking at the same skyline from different sides of town, still talking to each other through the music. That conversation is why we keep coming back.