Meet Marbs, one of the five founding members of Desert Hearts, an ever-growing electronic music label/collective that throws ridiculously fun parties and festivals. He is the resident deep house/dark techno aficionado of the welcoming core crew of lifelong friends. This summer, along with another close friend (and a DH regular), Evan Casey, he launched a brand-new "darker sounds" sublabel, Desert Hearts Black.

Just seven years ago, Mikey Lion, Marbs, Porky, Lee Reynolds and Kristoff McKay held their first DH Festival in the Mojave, a very cold and minimalist party that longtime members of their community refer to as "Frozen Hearts." While they've all helped Desert Hearts grow momentously since its humble beginnings—enhancing the fest each iteration, launching the main record label in 2014 and the sublabel this August, taking City Hearts events across the country and building a loyal fan base—the core of it has never changed.

"As long as we focus on the people and creating a place where incredibly talented, creative people want to come together and connect, then I think the things we create will be in flow with that," Marbs recently told us over the phone. Read on to learn more about their inspirational story, his kick-off collab release on Desert Hearts Black, what's in store for the major November City Hearts Festival in Downtown L.A. (happening on Nov. 9 and 10) and more.

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Next month you guys are bringing back City Hearts Festival to L.A. What are you most looking forward to with this iteration of the event?

I'm most looking forward to us doing new things and expanding the City Hearts experience. The whole idea for the City Hearts Festival is to bring that similar experience as the [flagship] festival at Los Coyotes to an urban setting that's more accessible for our direct community. Los Angeles is probably our strongest market, and the location is literally across the street from the train station so for people who are coming from San Diego or Santa Barbara or even farther north, they can hop on the train and as soon as they get off the train at Union Station they walk about 50 feet and they're at the party.

We really want to start doing this all over the nation and eventually the world, bringing the festival experience to other settings throughout the whole country and all the markets that we've been building with the tour. That's the main goal of the tour, to build our communities in large sections around the world and once those get strong enough for us to be able to do festivals in those locations. So this is a really exciting moment for us because we're finally taking the steps to get to that in place and L.A. is the first place that we want to do it.

Also, we've started working with this wonderful human being who goes by BlakeShine. She works with Dirtybird and Electric Forest and specializes in immersive experiences, where you might not even know you're in a theatrical space, it might just look like it's part of the festival and all of a sudden people in character will start interacting with you. They won't break character and will lure you into this experience and take you into this space. She has a lot of surprises for City Hearts Festival. She did the Forgotten Fort at Desert Hearts [spring 2019] Festival, so it's building off of that.

It really took you out of the festival and made you feel like you were at a theater or circus and they had all kinds of comedy, performances and interactive experiences. That I'm really looking forward to, because another thing with City Hearts Festival is we want to push the experience of festivals to a new place. There's so much saturation, especially in Los Angeles right now, with all the different events and festivals and DJ nights and there's something every day. To break that mold, we are really trying to think of ways to differentiate and create and build off of our community experience. We think that happens with immersive experiences, more art, more interactivity. All the things that we love in the Desert Hearts Festival, we're trying to bring in to our urban events as well.

The people that are going to keep people interested are the ones that are going to really be focusing on the experience and the community, and that's something we've always held close to the heart.

I love that. It reminds me a lot of the conversation with the Meow Wolf founders. I think it's really cool for the future of event experiences.

We love the Meow Wolf team, we want to work more closely with them. We played their Taos Vortex festival this year and we would love to work more with them.

And then with expanding City Hearts Fest, do you have a shortlist of where you guys want to go?

Just like with most of the stuff we do, we kind of want to go with the flow. The first one makes sense in L.A., that's where our strongest community hub is, even though we started in San Diego. We'd love to do New York, I think that's on the horizon. And Denver; we've really resonated with Colorado over the last however many years we've toured over there, it's really grown every single time we go there. So working towards maybe doing one there. San Francisco is a definite, we've already done a block party with the Great Northern club. So to do more stuff like that and build off of it, that's kind of the whole idea behind the City Hearts experience. Then onward, to Mexico, and we're starting to dip our toes into Europe so hopefully on the horizon we'll see it over there as well.

Just like in life, the more you pay attention to the little things and the more people you meet and all that, the more experience you get so that's what we're trying to bring. And it's not a V.I.P. [experience] or anything, it's more like trying to spark everyone's curiosity and get people exploring a little bit more.

What will the Desert Hearts Black experience at the City Hearts L.A. look and feel like?

Since it's mostly a day event, it'll go into the night, but not late. We're doing a special thing this event that we've never done before where instead of the core four—me, Mikey, Lee and Porky—playing individual sets, we've paired off with our favorite people that we've been working with over the years. So we're going to go back-to-back with some of our favorite DJs, which we'll announce later. And for the first time, we'll have a special Desert Heart Blacks set. While there isn't a whole block, there will be sections of the day that people will get to experience the deeper, more melodic side that we are diving into with Desert Hearts Black.

Going into the future, we've been talking about Desert Hearts Black holding a space for the after parties after a Desert Hearts day festival or day party. It's not something we have planned right now, but it's something we're talking about as a cool structure for how these two will be symbiotic with each other in a single bite.

It's only been a few months since you and Evan Casey officially launched Desert Hearts Black and dropped the debut release, the Torus EP. How has it felt for you so far?

It's been incredible. None of us anticipated the response. We believed in our music, of course, and we were so proud of the Torus EP, but for it to hit number one on overall releases on Beatport was something I wasn't imagining I would see yet in my career. It was a really amazing day when that happened and it really opened our eyes that we're on the right path and that trusting our hearts is going really well. And then the second release we put out is from Arude, Apophenia. It's getting played by people like [Berlin techno DJ/producer] Kevin de Vrise at Afterlife [events], which is just crazy.

It's really cool to see the response on this side of our Desert Hearts umbrella really flourishing and taking off. We have some cool releases lined up, we're really excited, and we're scheduled all the way through February or March of 2020. We're thankful for the people that are willing to work with us on this thing, especially with it being such a new off-branch of Desert Hearts.

A lot of people who resonate with the Desert Hearts experience and are part of the community are talented musicians and producers, but maybe what they produce didn't quite fit on our Desert Hearts Records primary label, as it's tech house and house focused. Now have this outlet that's giving the community a platform to express themselves in the community with the music that they make, like melodic house and techno or deep house or psychedelic more chill, down tempo stuff. We've seen a good response of people feeling like they have a place and a voice that they can creatively speak through now for Desert Hearts which is really, really cool.

Do you feel like everything with the Black label is moving faster than you imagined, or is exceeding your hopes so far?

A hundred percent. When we first had the idea of Desert Hearts Black, I was talking to my management like, "Well, if this thing goes well, let's talk about tour dates." Everyone was like, "Let's get there when we get there. Let's first get the label launched and set up. But the second we launched the label, the first EP went to number one and people came to us for tour dates.

We just played in Seattle and Portland this last weekend, both shows were incredible. They were small rooms but there were 300 people at each or so; a really good vibe, everyone smiling and dancing real hard and appreciative. It was the whole Desert Hearts vibe but curated to the sound that we're trying to push with Desert Hearts Black and I think that was another huge sign that we're on the right track and we're doing this in the right way. It means a lot.

We're going to Denver for Halloween, there's a Desert Hearts Black takeover, it has support from Charlotte DeWitte and Solardo and we're doing the side room. It's going to be a massive show, we also have some other dates that I can't announce yet that are really exciting so it's off and running.

"One of my favorite things from the beginning to now with Desert Hearts, has been traveling around with my best friends. We started as DJs before we ever had the festival or anything, we just wanted to play the music that we loved with the people that we loved."

Reflecting on the success so far, what are you most excited right now with the future of Desert Hearts Black?

One of my favorite things, from the beginning to now with Desert Hearts, has been traveling around with my best friends. We started as DJs before we ever had the festival or anything, we just wanted to play the music that we loved with the people that we loved. That's where all of this came from. I've never been on the road with Evan, who is one of my best friends, and neither with Mike [Rinzen], and to do that this last weekend was a really cool thing.

I'm very blessed and very humbled by all of this. I'm also looking forward to all of the music that's coming in. It's cool to be in a place now in the American market where melodic house and techno is being more digested on dancefloors. Compared to tech house which, five, six years ago was still being introduced and was still pretty underground as far as the places that we were touring. Now tech house is the norm. And now melodic house is opening a space for these other genres to come through, for people that are looking for a different experience but something similar, are getting hooked by it. I'm excited to see how that scene grows and where we're going to sit in that scene.

Read: Jan Blomqvist Talks Playing Coachella, Berlin Techno & Covering The Rolling Stones

What do you think the state of electronic or dance music feels like right now?

When I first started DJing and was going on Beatport, the stuff on the front page was not tech house. It was a lot of EDM and it was a whole different place. I think it's a direct reflection of what the market is because it's what people are buying. Now, all of the front page is tech house. So it shows that that genre has really taken a huge hold on the market, but what you're also seeing is new genres popping up. Melodic house and techno wasn't even a genre on Beatport a couple of years ago but now it is and it's doing really well. So 10 years from now, who knows what's going to be on the front page, but I do know that music is an organism that's constantly evolving. Everyone that loves music is always looking for that new music that they haven't heard yet that makes them feel the way that they do when they hear music that they love.

"Everyone that loves music is always looking for that new music that they haven't heard yet that makes them feel the way that they do when they hear music that they love."

Do you feel like the Torus EP is sort of the thesis statement of Desert Hearts Black?

Totally. The idea of Desert Hearts Black came from the synergy between the three of us [Marbs, Evan Casey and Rinzen] making that EP. When we first started the first track, we were just getting in the studio to try and make music together and see what happens, we had never done it before, all three of us. "Torus" [the title track] was made in two or three sessions and we were blown away at how stoked we were on that track and we were like, "We've got to keep to it."

We busted out two more tracks in another handful of sessions and I got that the sound doesn't really fit on Desert Hearts records but it's totally into the Desert Hearts festival experience. It would fit perfectly at the late hours of the festival and so the idea of creating the label came from that. I was like, "Well maybe I'll ask the boys what they think about a sister side label. I was a little nervous bringing it up to them because I didn't want it to sound like it was separation or anything like that. I just wanted it to be building off of what we had already done. Everyone was like "F**k yeah, you should definitely do that!"

It was totally received well and it meant a lot to me to have the support from the group. So that's when we decided the EP is a perfect statement of what we want Desert Hearts Black to push. We don't want it to be limited to that [sound] because it's very progressive, it's completely in the melodic house and techno sound. Desert Hearts Black is more going to be a range, you'll see it in the next couple of weeks as [releases] come out. It's supposed to reflect the experience you have at the Desert Hearts festival in the late hours into the mornings. So some of those sunrise sets that get really trippy and weird and tribal, maybe a little bit more eclectic, there's going to be releases that hit that note. If you sit it next to Torus it's going to sound like two totally different sounds.

That's what we want, we want to hit all of the other sounds that Desert Hearts community loves that maybe don't have a place on the primary label and that way between the two labels we hit the full spectrum of what people enjoy at the festival.

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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bys9_5Nh6Ms/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">All the feels this Friday with @dale_howard new EP now out on @desertheartsrecords (link in bio) + the crew is in the UK right now gearing up for @egg_club_london tomorrow! And we’ve got another badass album from the DH festival up on our Facebook shot by the talented @gettiny #tagyourfriends</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/deserthearts/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> DESERT HEARTS</a> (@deserthearts) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-06-14T19:54:17+00:00">Jun 14, 2019 at 12:54pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote><script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>

For the uninitiated, how would you explain Desert Hearts and then Desert Hearts Black?

Desert Hearts has always been about love, acceptance, being yourself, radical expression, radical inclusion, a lot of the things we've learned from Burning Man. To know that whether you're coming by yourself for the first time or with a group for the first time, that this is a safe place for you to express yourself and be your true self and enjoy some really good music along the way. To build off of that, Desert Hearts Black is that same space for people that resonate maybe with more moody, dark, progressive music. And because that music is a little bit more journey-driven, it makes people go a little deeper.

We want people to have the same experience that they have at any Desert Hearts event, the feeling of acceptance and love and smiles everywhere and the freedom to express themselves how they want. If that means being decked out in black or being however you want to be, that is a space for you and it's just as much Desert Hearts as anything else, and we want people to feel that way no matter what.

As you know, there's the stereotype of the "real techno DJ"; he wears all black, he's a guy, he's very serious and not dancing. What's your view on that idea? I'm going to say that you are one of the people doing your part to break the mold and keep the dancefloor fun.

I think it really matters what space you're having an experience in. In the European techno market, there's so much good music and so many people doing it, that it's so competitive. I feel like maybe that's where that culture comes from. Don't get me wrong, I fell in love with techno because of Ritchie Hawtin and because of all these incredible people that normally are very stoic. I mean you'll see Ritchie loosen up a little bit and have a smile here and there but for the most part it's pretty serious.

One person I love to say as an example that does it right is Dubfire. Ali [Shirazinia a.k.a. Dubfire] plays the same music as all those guys, but when you see him behind the booth he's having fun, he's interacting with people in there. He's having fun but still active and DJing very heavily, not just playing a track and f**king around. He's really taking in the experience around him and that's something I know we do at Desert Hearts. Just look at the booth and see how the mayhem in there.

We have a joke: in their rider most DJs will say, "No people in the booth." They need their space. We're the opposite. We feel really weird when there's no one in there with us. It's really what we want to push as far as this melodic house and techno project, and the experience on the dancefloor and in the booth. We want it to be like Ali and how he represents himself, it might sound harder and a little bit more serious, but we want people to be having fun.

In our mind, if you're enjoying the music it shouldn't make any difference on how you are expressing your enjoyment of it. And so we want to push that and we want to push not taking things so seriously. We're all here just trying to have fun, play and make music, and have a cool experience. As we learned from Burning Man, to take these experiences home, to treat people the way that you are treated. The music that's playing shouldn't change how you treat people at these experiences or throughout every day of your life.

"We have a joke: in their rider most DJs will say, 'No people in the booth.' They need their space. We're the opposite. We feel really weird when there's no one in there with us."

I love that we've been seeing more diversity, especially with gender, in the international techno and house space. It's nice to see more variety because when people are like, "No, DJs do this," it's like, "Well what about this guy? What about this woman?"

It is for sure. Just like with anything in life—I say that a lot but everything's connected—the more labels and constraints we put on anything, the worse it is. The less freedom there is, less creative expression there is. So all of the labels and constraints that we put on DJs; how they should act or what they should play or what the right experience is, it doesn't matter. It should be a matter of flow and experience and however that magnet connects people and brings them in.

If I'm a goofy techno DJ and there's a serious techno DJ, that serious techno DJ is going to attract the people that like that experience and that's great for them. Good for it. I'm going to express myself the way that I do and the people that resonate with that are going to come, like a magnet. There's no need for the labels, just let everyone do what they want. Some things are going to do better than others. Some are going to get fizzled out and some are going to flourish and it's just about going with the flow and letting people do what they want to do.

Yes! Desert Hearts has grown so much in just seven years. What do you think is the biggest thing that keeps you true to the core values of House, Techno & Love, and that inclusive experience that you were talking about?

It's 100% the community and the people, that's the biggest backbone of this whole thing; our focus on people being who they truly want to be and expressing themselves the way they want. We could play good music all day, we can bring the best sound, but without the community and the people that come to these events, it would not be anything like what it is. This whole thing's a big ship—with me, Mikey, Lee and Porks are driving the thing—it's not going to work without all the people working. It's not going to do anything, it'll just be four guys on a boat. I could be Djing in my room to a wall, playing the best music that anyone's ever heard or we could be doing what we're doing with the people that we're doing it with. That's the whole thing.

If as long as we focus on the people and creating a place where incredible talented, creative people want to come together and connect, then I think the things we create will be in flow with that. And so we get signs and we have ideas for new projects, and as long as the intention of those projects is to build that community, everything has always been successful. From the beginning of us saying we just want to get out of the bars and go to the desert, we want to go and have an experience with our friends and play the music that we love and that's it, no other constraints. The whole idea was to create an experience for the people that we love and for us and I think that's why it just snowballed; the first one was 300 [people], the next one was 1000, the next one was 2000. I think it will keep everything glued together as long as we keep doing that.

When did you first start DJing and making music? Did you have a professional "Plan B"?

I got into DJing about 10, 12 years ago and started doing it at bars about nine, 10 years ago. Music production came much later. I've been producing music for the last five years. Now I'm in a place where I'm comfortable releasing my music, so it's been a long road to get to that point. Back when I first started to DJ, I was helping my father with his repair and maintenance construction business. He does commercial repairs for places like Home Depot, JC Penney, big corporate accounts. I started off swinging the hammer, fixing tile and drywall and dealing with electrical and plumbing and stuff. I worked my way up to managing construction jobs, being an account manager for Home Depot through his business and helping him with some of the behind the scenes stuff.

I was working with that, 40 hours a week when I was DJing shows on the weekends, when we were doing our jungle parties. We used to throw these little bar parties in San Diego called "Jungle" that we'd bring a bunch of palm fronds and plants and make the whole booth look like a little jungle and play tech house and take over little dive bars. That's what we were doing before we went to Burning Man and decided we wanted to start doing stuff out in the desert.

I actually had that job through the first two years of Desert Hearts, so it was hard. It was what I had to be doing as far as being sustainable as an adult, paying the bills and living on my own but also trying to chase my dream. I was burning the candle at both ends; I wasn't sleeping much, I was going into work after doing shows until 4 a.m. But it was a great experience because it really taught me how to follow your dream and to work really hard in the beginnings of that phase. When I finally decided I was going to stop working for my father's business, it was a hard decision. I was very happy to help my dad with his business that he grew from an idea that he had when he was 16.

I'll never forget looking my dad in the eyes and saying, "Look, I don't think this is for me, I'm going to go do this Desert Hearts thing and throw parties." He looked right back at me and supported me and said okay, but you could see in his eyes, he was like, "You crazy f**k."

But he was so supportive and we brought him and my mom out to Desert Hearts a couple of years later when it was at Los Coyotes and was really growing and flourishing. I will never forget that, because it was them finally realizing that I didn't quit that job to go DJ, but that I really created something really special with four of my best friends. That was the day I feel like everything shifted for me.

Justin Jay On The Joy Of DJing, Expanding His Horizons, And How Fans Think He's Still A College Freshman

Curtis Jones is a dance music legend, whose multiple monikers only begin to demonstrate his deep and varied influence in the genre.

Jones has been active as a producer and DJ for decades, and is among a cadre of dance music acts forging a connection between the genre's origins and its modern iterations. Crucially, he  joined Chicago house legends Honey Dijon and Terry Hunter on Beyoncé's house-infused RENAISSANCE, providing a sample for "Cozy." He’s also produced tracks with house favorites Chris Lake and Oliver Heldens, and DJed with Dom Dolla and John Summit.

Jones contributed to the aforementioned collaborations, young and old, as Green Velvet. He’s been releasing dance hits like "Flash" and "Answering Machine" under that name since the mid- '90s. He is also currently a staple of the live circuit, his signature green mohawk vibing in clubs and festivals around the globe — including at his own La La Land parties in Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando, and elsewhere.

Green Velvet is appropriately braggadocious, even releasing the popular "Bigger Than Prince" in 2013. But by the time Jones had released the heavy-grooving tech house track, his artistry had been percolating for decades as Cajmere.

Where Green Velvet releases lean into acid house and Detroit techno, Cajmere is all about the traditional house sound of Jones’ hometown of Chicago. When Jones first debuted Cajmere in 1991, Chicago’s now-historic reputation for house music was still developing. Decades after the original release, Cajmere tracks like "Percolator,” have sustained the Windy City sound via remixes by prominent house artists like Will Clarke, Jamie Jones, and Claude VonStroke.

"I love doing music under both of my aliases, so it’s great when fans discover the truth,” Jones tells GRAMMY.com over email. Often, Jones performs as Cajmere to open his La La Land parties, and closes as Green Velvet. 

But beyond a few scattered performances and new tracks, Cajmere has remained dormant while Green Velvet became a worldwide headliner, topping bills in Mexico City, Toronto, Bogotá and other international dance destinations. He’s only shared two original releases as Cajmere since 2016: "Baby Talk,” and "Love Foundation,” a co-production with fellow veteran Chicago producer/DJ Gene Farris.

This year, Jones is reviving Cajmere to headliner status with his new live event series, Legends. First held in March in Miami, Jones' Legends aims to highlight other dance music legends, from Detroit techno pioneers Stacey Pullen and Carl Craig, to Chicago house maven Marshall Jefferson. 

"My intention is to shine a light on those who sacrificed so much to keep house music alive," Jones writes. "The sad reality is that most of the legendary artists aren’t celebrated or compensated as well as they should be."

Given that dance music came into the popular music zeitgeist relatively recently, the originators of the genre — like the artists Jones booked for his Legends party — are still in their prime. Giving them space to perform allows them to apply the same innovation they had in the early '90s in 2024.

Jones says the Miami Legends launch was an amazing success."Seeing the passion everyone, young and old, displayed was so inspiring."

Curtis Jones, center, DJs at the Miami Legends party ┃Courtesy of the artist

The first Legends party also served as a celebration of Cajual Records, the label Jones launched in 1992 as a home for his Cajmere music. Over the past three decades, Cajual has also released tracks from dance music veterans such as Riva Starr, as well as contemporary tastemakers like Sonny Fodera and DJ E-Clyps. 

Furthermore, Jones’ partnership with revered singers such as Russoul and Dajae (the latter of whom still performs with him to this day) on Cajual releases like "Say U Will” and "Waterfall” helped to define the vocal-house style.

Like the Cajmere project, Cajual Records has been moving slower in recent years. The label has only shared four releases since 2018. True to form, though, Jones started another label; Relief Records, the home of Green Velvet's music, shared 10 releases in 2023 alone.

Jones says he's been particularly prolific as Green Velvet because "the genres of tech house and techno have allowed me the creative freedom I require as an artist."

Now Jones is making "loads of music” as Cajmere again and recently signed a new distribution deal for Cajual Records. The true sound of Chicago is resonating with audiences in 2024, Jones says, adding "it's nice that house is making a comeback."

Jones remembers when house music was especially unpopular. He used to call radio stations in the '80s to play tracks like Jamie Principle's underground classic "Waiting On My Angel,” only to be told they didn’t play house music whatsoever. In 2024, house music records like FISHER’s "Losing It” were certified gold, and received nominations for Best Dance Recording at the 66th GRAMMY Awards. Jones is embracing this popularity with open arms.

Read more: The Rise Of Underground House: How Artists Like Fisher & Acraze Have Taken Tech House, Other Electronic Genres From Indie To EDC

"The new audience it’s attracting is excited to hear unique underground-style house records now. This is perfect for my Cajmere sets,” Jones says. "I never saw Green Velvet being more popular than Cajmere, and both sounds being as popular as they are even today.” 

While Jones is finding success in his own artistic endeavors, he points to a general lack of appreciation for Black dance artists in festival bookings. Looking at the run-of-show for ARC Festival, a festival in Chicago dedicated to house and techno music, legendary artists play some of the earliest slots. 

For the 2023 edition, Carl Craig played at 3 p.m on Saturday while the young, white John Summit, closed the festival the same night. In 2021, the acid house inventor, Chicago’s DJ Pierre, played the opening set at 2 p.m. on Saturday, while FISHER, another younger white artist, was the headliner.

In 2020, Marshall Jefferson penned an op-ed in Mixmag about the losing battle he is fighting as a Black DJ from the '90s. He mentions that younger white artists often receive upwards of $250,000 for one gig, whereas he receives around $2,000, despite the fact that he still DJs to packed crowds 30 years after he started.

Jones is doing his part to even the playing field with Legends, and according to him, things are going well after the first edition. "Seeing how much respect the fans have for the Legends was so special,” Jones says. "Hopefully they become trendy again.” 

The story of Curtis Jones is already one of legend, but it is far from over. "I feel it’s my duty to continue to make creative and innovative tracks as well as musical events. I love shining the light on new upcoming and emerging artists as well as giving the originators their proper dues,” Jones says. 

How LP Giobbi & Femme House Are Making Space For Women In Dance Music: "If You Really Want To Make A Change, It Can Be Done"

Elyanna is every bit an artist of our specific moment. The 22-year-old Los Angeles-based singer weaves together global influences, merging sounds from her personal history with a wider pop sensibility. 

With hints of Rihanna’s sultriness and Astrud Gilberto's effortless cool, Elyanna's music is often accompanied by a pulsating beat and traditional Middle Eastern instruments. 

By uniting musical traditions from the Palestinian and Chilean sides of her family, she creates songs that are at once sweetly enticing and bracing. "Al Sham," for example, opens with ethereal, floating vocals before morphing to incorporate aggressive synths and drums. The result is a growing, idiosyncratic body of work made for both crying on the dancefloor and rump-shaking. 

Paradoxical? Sure, but there are no contradictions in Elyanna’s art, only unexpected connections that make sense as soon as she starts talking about how they fit together. Of her forthcoming album, Woledto (in English, I Am Born), Elyanna explains that she and her brother/co-composer/producer Feras wanted to create music with unusual depth. "I want people to find these clues, because that’s the kind of art I like, when it’s deep and not always on the surface," she tells GRAMMY.com.

She knows Woledto is a big swing, and relishes the feeling of freedom and self-determination that comes with that kind of risk. "I really put my heart and all my emotions, everything I feel in it, and what I love about it is that I think that it's ahead of its time."  

In 2023, Elyanna notched a unique milestone as the first Arab artist to perform in Arabic at Coachella. Her subsequent debut tour sold out every date, and her next performance in the U.S. is set for April 27 at Los Angeles’ storied Wiltern Theater. The singer/songwriter takes it all in stride, with a natural self-possession; Elyanna is an energetic, curious young woman who’s as at ease on the road as she is in the living room studio she maintains at her parents’ home. 

With Woledto out April 12, Elyanna sat down with GRAMMY.com to chat about writing authentic bangers, repping every facet of her identities at Coachella and beyond, and her seamless approach to sound and vision. 

This conversation has been condensed and edited.

Woledto is out this week – congratulations! How are you feeling about it?

I'm excited – it feels so cool! I really took my time with this one, because I was able to figure out this new layer of myself and was able to connect with my roots more than ever. 

I know that not everyone's gonna get it right away, and I believe that when you want to create art that feels timeless, you have to make sure that you don't rush it. It's fine if it takes its time. I just wanted to create something that felt outside of the world, and had its own feeling and world. 

Can you expand a bit about pouring your whole self into this album? You mentioned your feelings, your identity, and you have such an interesting, multinational identity as a Palestinian-Chilean woman who now lives in Los Angeles. How did you incorporate all of that – and other aspects of yourself – into Woledto?

I come from two different backgrounds, and it's always very natural for me to put those together; I was born and raised in Nazareth, Palestine, and I am also part Chilean, so this is my world. I love to dig deeper into culture, and find more inspirations — there's so many hidden gems in my cultures, and I feel like it's time for the world to see it and to hear about it. 

I took inspiration from my grandfather — he’s the only featured performer on this album. I saw this video of him singing in a wedding; he was a singer and a poet, and he was doing a freestyle in Arabic. I sampled that video in a song called "Sad in Pali" — me and my brother were in Palestine for a visit after a few years away, and we felt very disconnected from everything there. This album has a lot of intentional inspirations that I want people to find.

Your music videos feed into that goal, too — they’re very arty, the imagery is so distinctive. The song that leaps to mind first is "Gheneni", which opens with a male vocal — I thought maybe it was a call to worship — and then channels Rihanna in your vocal, while the visuals are a hybrid of belly dance and you and your girls all hanging out in the desert. How do you weave all of those things together into a song that means "Drive Me Crazy"?

So my studio is at home in the living room, super humble, and it’s always full of friends and family sitting around while me and my brother [Feras] are working there. 

One day my dad was watching a very dramatic Arabic show, and my brother heard this music in the back that felt so powerful, so spiritual. So my brother took that and sampled it, and that’s the vocal that opens the song. Then he made a beat that feels like tribal fusion to follow. I always say "Gheneni" is spiritual, and also reminds me of "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee, because it’s got so much swag. I’m rapping and just doing my thing on it, it’s a rollercoaster of emotions and very sassy. I love it. 

You look so free in that video, and I noticed that in most of your videos, there’s at least a few big moments of you being surrounded by other women. It’s really memorable in "Mama Eh," too. Tell me a little bit about the aesthetic and approach you use when you’re making these videos?

I really love to collab with people — I try my best, always, to be open to ideas. Usually how it starts is with my brother, we make the music and take care of the visual creativity of it. He’s my creative director, so we always keep sharing ideas together, brainstorming, and we save it all in this little folder to use whenever the time’s right. I love to always come in ready for my videos, live performances, but I never want to forget to be natural, and I don't want to be too ready, sometimes I want to be free. Sometimes all you need is just to be you, singing on camera, and that's enough. 

I love having a lot of female empowerment around me, too. I was raised that way — my mom is a very strong woman, my grandma is a very strong woman, my sister is a very strong woman, and I find so much power, if I'm feeling down, to talk to my sister and to talk to my girlfriends. So especially as an Arab woman, I want to make sure that I lift this female energy up for all the girls out there, and all the girls in the Middle East to feel that they can dream big, and they don't have to be always so soft. 

That’s really who I am, sometimes aggressive, very passionate and on fire. I feel like every human, we have a little bit of both, and I don't want to hide any of them. I want to be real and honest.

It seems like another throughline in your music is its cinematic quality. Woledto’s title track is also the album opener, and it sounds like it could as easily have been something you wrote for a film. If you could pick any film scene for your music to play over, what would it be?

I'm such a movie nerd! Right now, the film that felt so much like the world that I create in my music is Dune, Part Two or The Black Swan. There's so many scenes that I love, but it makes so much sense from what we were just talking about the different, changing parts of our personalities that I feel like the last performance where Natalie Portman had to perform as both the white swan and the black swan would be perfect for the outros of "Kon Nafsak" or "Sad in Pali." 

I understand you had a really special experience meeting Lana del Rey on one of your music videos. It makes sense that you’d love her, her work is so cinematic and she has such a recognizable style. 

Yes! Lana’s sister Chuck is an amazing director, and she shot one of my videos, for "La Vie en Rose." It’s a cover of the Edith Piaf song, and Chuck has such a beautiful vision. 

So Lana was there for the whole shoot, and she picked my dresses, and gifted them to me! She was an angel, just the coolest, and she did not disappoint. I've been listening to Lana since I was 10, and was obsessed with her. She was literally on my phone case. Meeting her and working with her and fully trusting what she says — I cried at the end, it was amazing. 

How great to have an experience that disproves the advice never to meet your heroes. In your cover, do you sing in French, English, or Arabic? 

It’s in Arabic, the title for my version is "Al Kawn Janni Maak." I actually co-wrote that translation with my mom and my brother; I’d always wanted to hear it in Arabic. 

That's really cool. It sounds like your work is very rooted in your family, not just having them with you at home or on tour, but they’re a big part of your music itself, too. 

It was always this way, even when I was little — I was 7 years old, 10 years old, and just dreaming of being an artist. My brother is the one who discovered my talent — he’s a pianist, and he would sit next to me for hours while I'm singing with a big mic, saying "Yo, you can do this note better." 

My mom writes my music with me, and it’s very powerful and so interesting. My sister Tali is part of it, too; she’s always been very good with fashion and is my stylist. We’d always be doing fashion shoots in our backyard, where my sister would dress me and my brother would take the pictures. I don't think anything’s changed since then, it’s just on another level, a bigger scale. We complete each other. 

Let’s talk about your influences and how you find your way to them. You’ve got this great playlist on Spotify that includes such a diverse group of artists, including ones that were delightful surprises: Pink Floyd, Nancy Sinatra, Chris Isaac, and Sadé. How do you discover artists who have a long history but are new to you?

I grew up listening to and singing jazz, I used to be obsessed with it. And it was very rare in Nazareth, but I must have found videos on YouTube. Etta James’ songs feel so real and timeless. There’s a lot of live instruments, it’s very detailed and very raw. It’s so beautiful! The lyrics, the production, even the fashion —it’s a world that I just really, really love.

I am very open when it comes to music. The best thing is to have conversations with people and meet new people, they bring you so much knowledge that you can bring into your own world. 

Speaking of sharing worlds, you did that on a massive scale by playing at Coachella last year. You’re the first Arab artist to perform in Arabic at that festival, and it’s kind of shocking that it took so long for that milestone to happen. What does that experience mean to you?

I like to look at the bigger picture; you know, it was very exciting, and it's not only for me, it's for our culture, for our people. It was an honor singing at an iconic festival, and I do not want to be the last person that performs there in Arabic. 

It was a moment that I feel like we needed for our culture, and I was surprised by how many people saw that performance — I didn’t expect it, so many people were there from completely different cultures, probably not knowing what I was saying, but they still loved it. 

That mirrors your interest in and embrace of always experiencing and looking for something new, giving that to the audience, too. 

Exactly. It was new to me, too, because Coachella was really my first real performance. I'm there thinking that's a lot of responsibility on me now, so I have to make it work, to make it the best I can. I was able to bring the belly dancing, the tribal fusion dancing, all these elements that we have in our culture, like the coins on my hips — it means a lot to me that people took it in like that. 

Empress Of Is Here 'For Your Consideration': How Heartbreak, Horniness & Self-Acceptance Led To An Actualized Album

Since Nia Archives came on the scene in 2020, she has been making noise.

The 24-year-old native of Northern England produces jungle — the dance subgenre known for its loud, raucous breakbeats — and her achievements in her short career (figuratively) match the volume of her chosen style.

Over four years, Nia Archives has released tracks with tens of millions of Spotify streams like "Headz Gone West" and "Sober Feelz," started her own event series, Up Ya Archives, and become friends with the jungle originator Goldie. Nia also closed a stage at Coachella 2023, and opened for Beyoncé during the London RENAISSANCE tour show.

Nia’s also made significant strides for equality in dance music. In 2022, she wrote a letter to Britain’s MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards imploring them to include a dance and electronic music category. In response, not only did they add the category that same year, but Nia won it.

For as much noise as she’s made in recent years, Nia always makes room in her life for contrast. Out April 12, Nia Archives' debut album, Silence Is Loud, the singer, producer, and DJ shows that there is just as much power in the quiet.

"Silence can be weakness for some people: You didn't say what you wanted to say; you were too weak to make noise," Nia tells GRAMMY.com. "But it can also be powerful. Keeping your silence. Holding your tongue and not saying what might not have been beneficial." 

This contrast is central to Nia’s music, and sees new heights on Silence. Her sweet, ringing voice counters the heaviness of jungle beats, while lighter genres are layered over fast-moving breaks. On tracks "Cards On The Table" and "Out of Options," the melodic foundation is built on Britpop-esque acoustic guitar chords. On the album's title track, Nia contrasts massive kick drums and high-pitched squeals, with softer, heartfelt lyrics detailing her dependence on her little brother.

GRAMMY.com spoke to Nia Archives about finding balance in contrast, her writing process, and making noise in the near-silent U.S. jungle scene.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

The hallmark of jungle music is busy breakbeats. How do you incorporate the concept of silence into the genre?

Jungle is so chaotic and intense. That's one of the things I've always loved about the music — the hectic drum patterns. But in my music, the songwriting is always quite emotional with a lot of meaning in it. Bringing the two together always makes something quite interesting. 

With this project, I really wanted to focus on songwriting. I took the time to research the great songwriters from the Beatles to Amy Winehouse, Radiohead, Blur. Kings of Leon were a huge inspiration to me throughout this project as well. 

In the past, a lot of music I was writing was quite surface-level. I wasn't going as inward as I could; maybe out of fear. The process of this project was different. 

I'd write the songs in bed in the morning, and then make the drum patterns on my laptop. I’d take my little demo [to my friend and producer Ethan P. Flynn] and we’d make the song in like three hours. That process really worked for me because it meant I could really get deep. 

I'd write loads of sh-t lyrics before I got to the good lyrics. In studios, it’s hard to get all the rubbish thoughts in your head and say them in front of people. So I quite enjoyed the privacy of writing in bed and taking it to Ethan. We’d just have fun and bang out all the tunes. 

How did the work of the Beatles and Radiohead manifest when you were making the album?

I've got really eclectic taste in music. I love jungle, that's my bread and butter, but I’ve always found fun in fusing genres together to make something new. 

I really enjoy deep-diving into the Beatles, Blur or Radiohead, [and] listening to the structures and the instrument choices. There are certain things that make them what they are, especially Blur with Britpop. I was listening to the Ronettes and a lot of Motown. I went to Detroit last year, and I got to go to the Motown Museum. I found that really inspiring; those productions, it's crazy what they did with what they had.

I'll never be able to make music how the people that I listen to make it — especially when you bring in jungle beats and 170 BPM. It's always gonna be a slightly off-kilter version of the original inspiration. But I think that makes something quite fun and unique.

Blur's Damon Albarn also leads Gorillaz, opening him up to all manner of collaborations. What would you think about being on a Gorillaz track at some point?

It'd be a dream come true! If there's anybody that I'm trying to get to listen to my album. It's definitely Damon Albarn. I'm actually gonna send him an unsolicited vinyl just because I really love his music. He's an incredible musician, artist, everything. He's a big inspiration to me.

You’ve said in previous interviews that jungle is "anything over a breakbeat." Why do you think contrasting sounds can fit so well over a breakbeat?

I think jungle, especially in the '90s, was so futuristic. The breaks themselves, depending on how you construct them, are so versatile. The breaks have so much room to go in whatever direction you want. You can go really heavy, or you can go really light and atmospheric. 

All of the original junglists have their own style. They weren't all trying to be the same. They were very strong in their identity, which is one of the other things I love about it.

What kind of modern music are you excited about integrating into jungle?

I quite like a lot of happy hardcore stuff, which is not new. I really enjoy those melodies [and you don't really hear that sound as much. I really love disco; I'd like to do something like that. 

You’re one of the only artists, if not the only jungle artist of this generation who has built an audience in the U.S. You’ve played Coachella and headlined U.S. tours. How does it feel to be a driving force in introducing jungle to America?

Older generations know about jungle. But I feel like a lot of the young kids in the U.S. are definitely discovering it, which is super exciting. It's really cool to build community in America as well. Every time I've played in America I get the proper ravers down. 

A big part of jungle is the culture and the community that comes with it. We have such a rich culture in the UK; we're kind of spoiled. Whereas in America it feels like people who like that music, they're still building [community].

I love playing in New York cause they've got a lot of new-gen junglists. There's a few new producers who are like 20-21 [years old] who I always hang out with when I go to New York. It's really cool to see their take on jungle, 'cause the American producers that I know have a different view of it.

In the UK we have so many jungle nights and so many raves constantly. In America, those jungle nights feel quite special and one-off. I feel really excited to keep coming back and keep building that community in America. I'm excited to see all the new producers that come up in the next couple of years, as well.

Have you supported any new American junglists by inviting them to perform at an Up Ya Archives party or playing out their tracks live?

There's a kid called Dazegxd. I got him on my Lot Radio takeover for Up Ya Archives. Then he actually played at the Knockdown Center [in Queens, NY] for me which was amazing.

I've booked him to play his first London show at an Up Ya Archives party. That's a really meaningful connection to me 'cause he's quite young and he's so excited about the music; he's proper geeking out about jungle. I love people like that because I'm also a geek of this music.

I'm looking forward to meeting more people like that. I love creating friendships and relationships with people and getting them to play my parties. 

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Where do you see your career, and jungle as a whole, going in the future?

I'd love to keep building on what I'm doing. My album, I'm hoping, is my flag in the sand moment for who I am as an album artist. There's a lot of fusions, and I'm hoping that people can hear it and understand where I'm trying to go.

I hope to make more albums and keep traveling the world. I've got a lot of exciting touring coming up this year. If I can do what I'm doing now, but a bit better in five years, I'll be a very happy person. 

My goal in life, similar to Goldie, is to do what I'm doing for the rest of my life. They've been doing it for 30 years. People come and go, but they've held it down for as long as they have, and they're still as relevant as they were 30 years ago.

That's what I want in my career. To still be able to play music and make music when I'm like 50. That is the real goal.

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The album cover photo for Mount Kimbie’s fourth LP, The Sunset Violent, captures a mundane yet curious slice of life: A car nearly tipped over and abandoned on the side of a road lined with towering cornfields. According to members Kai Campos and Dom Maker, it was taken by photographer T-Bone Fletcher as part of a project documenting his travels across the U.S. 

"There was something so peculiar about the whole scene," Maker tells GRAMMY.com, "and just kind of oddly unsettling whilst being quite peaceful at the same time." Adds Campos, "It's just such a great start to a story as well."

The making of The Sunset Violent could be its own arthouse film. In 2021, the two Brits drove to the California desert at the height of summer. Their AirBnB, with its cornhole board and ping-pong table, possessed the energy of an old frat house. The horizons were endless; entertainment options were less so, which provided the focus they needed to create. Six weeks of melting heat, arid landscapes, and wandering imaginations became sun-baked into the album’s nine tracks  — a collection of surrealist short stories, hazy guitars, and indie-rock textures that feel vast, almost exposing, and deeply rooted in its space.

"I think when you see the horizon just go on forever, it does something to your brain that creates space for ideas," Campos says. "It's definitely the most American record we've made."

Those Yucca Valley creations seem a world away from the London dubstep scene in which Maker and Campos launched Mount Kimbie. Their 2010 debut LP Crooks & Lovers pushed genre boundaries through delicate and intricate electronic compositions more suited for headphones than subwoofer-rattling. Their next two albums incorporated live instruments, original vocals, and more traditional song structure, and with live shows a bigger focus, they recruited drummer Marc Pell and keyboardist Andrea Balency-Béarn for their touring band. 

Maker and Campos' paths even diverged for a time. Maker relocated to Los Angeles in 2016 and produced for James Blake, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, and others, while Campos turned to DJing. On their 2022 double album MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning, each worked on his half independently of the other, building two worlds inhabited by separate sonic ecosystems.

Their desert reunion showed them the way forward, together, to a sound and style they "want to keep doing more of, which we haven't really had before," Maker says. That included Pell and Balency-Béarn officially joining Mount Kimbie, and Maker returning to London.

Ahead of the album’s April 5 release, Maker and Campos sat down with GRAMMY.com to chronicle their "inevitable" journey to The Sunset Violent.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Dom, it’s funny that you made this album, one so rooted in California, right before moving back to London. Is it me or are California albums a rite of passage for bands these days?

Dom Maker: It’s quite strange because we didn't really attach that much to the trip to California when we were out there. But in retrospect, and in actually speaking about this record in interviews and with friends, we started to realize how much that experience really bled into it; sort of the end of an era there for me. So it felt good to come away with a document of that period of time in my life.

Kai Campos: Like Dom said, we hadn't really considered how American in aesthetic it was. I think when you grow up in the UK and other parts of the world, you kind of inherit a lot of American culture at the same time, so you're always having this slightly removed relationship with it. The guitar music that I listened to when I was thinking about this album was mostly American, and it was just an interesting place to think about writing from. Over the last 10 years or longer, [we have] been so associated with London, so it was interesting to remove ourselves from that familiar situation in some ways.

That area of California in particular, so close to L.A., is very accessible and you can be there in a couple of hours in the car. At the same time, it feels really remote and unique and special, the landscapes and stuff like that. 

Can you tell me more about the guitar music you were listening to while making this album?

Campos: Sometimes there's songs or bands that I’ll hear one time, years and years before, and it'll always be in my head that I'm going to try and take whatever experience I had from listening to that and try and make some work. So there's all these little bits and pieces that collect over the years until there's enough of a space where I feel like, okay, I feel like I have a voice in this. Sometimes it's just one song from a band. There’s a track called "Rena" by Sonic Youth that I heard more than a decade ago that’s always been in the back of my head: One day, I'm going to try and rip that off.

Then there's other things to do with the sound of the guitars. There's a band called Land of Talk that has this super flat, compressed guitar sound that just sparked something in my head. And then more jam band, almost comical American guitar music, like NRBQ. All of these things just sit around in the soup in your brain until you find a way to articulate them yourself. I think the record in general is the friction between being British and how you interact with American culture in general.

Can you expand on that?

Campos: When you're a kid in the UK — I'm thinking early to mid-'90s — America is a bit of a fairytale, and it seems so shiny and exciting. Obviously, because it's a real place, it's way more complicated than that. And so there's a little bit of the fairytale kind of crumbling. At the same time [there's] Dom's perspective as somebody who had been living there for a long time. So it wasn't a conscious thing, but when we reflected on the record, we realized that there may be a theme here.

Maker: For me it was skating. All the skate stuff that I watched was from the States and it was like, oh my god, it's sunny all the time there. And that alone was amazing. 

I thought that America would be way more similar to where I'm from, the way things worked and the people I would be around. And that's completely not the case. That kind of friction, I found, was quite juicy as inspiration — not necessarily friction in a negative sense, but just that abrasiveness between my understanding of the world and the world around me. Even more so when you go to the desert  — the deepest, darkest like Yucca Valley in California  — that really made a lot of this record flourish.

The Sunset Violent is a lyric from your song "Dumb Guitar." It’s a visceral phrase that stirs me even if I can't quite grasp what it means. How do you interpret it, and how does that inform the record?

Maker: Honestly, that's kind of exactly how I feel, the way you feel about it. We picked out a few lyrics that we liked; it’s really not really a well-thought-out sort of title or anything. It just felt fitting for the sound and for that slight friction: The peacefulness of a sunset, and then the violence doesn't seem to fit, but it kind of does in a weird way. 

A big part of the record in general for us, especially for me with the lyric writing, was trying to set a scene that was a little bit unorthodox and maybe even slightly comical. So yeah, "the sunset violent" just felt like the one line that really stuck out. I love it more and more every time I think about it.

Is there a lyrical thread throughout the album, or is each song its own chapter?

Maker: I think each song is definitely its own short story. Some of my favorite writing that I've ever read is by Roald Dahl. A lot of his adult writing is brilliant because each story just casts a spell on you and takes you to a completely different place. With this album, I wanted to really tap into my love of short stories and writing that's very much fiction. It has some grounding in reality, but there's that fictional feel to it. 

I suppose it’s a new thing for me because I've really never written lyrics for this project. There's never been any sort of lead vocal from the band internally. So it was quite difficult for me initially to try and figure out what I wanted to say. Then I was like, well, actually I don't really want to say anything, and that was quite freeing in itself. 

I read about how the Pixies wrote "Where is My Mind?" — I was like, where are these f—ing insane lyrics from? — and he's like, "Oh, I was snorkeling in the Bahamas and I was just writing about a fish that I saw." The idea of just letting go of trying to write about something was really, really good for me. Absorbing surroundings and trying to feed some of the visuals that I was seeing into the writing was the main thing I wanted to do.

What specific visuals stand out?

Maker: I think the world of "Dumb Guitar": The idea of this slowly degrading, failing relationship and it all kind of coming to a head in this weird resort in China on a beach. I've never been to a beach in China, but I imagine everything's a bit artificial. 

What song would you say became the core of the album? The track where you realized, yes, this is the direction that we should go?

Campos: Yeah, there's a few different moments. You need that initial thing to happen where you get really excited and have enough of a vision to move in a certain direction, and that probably was "Dumb Guitar." 

There were maybe a couple of false starts before that. But ["Dumb Guitar"] was the first one that in terms of the songwriting made me a bit uncomfortable. You try to take that as a good sign [that] you're doing something new to you. To me that was more conventional songwriting, which I would never have done in the past. Even something as simple as a chord that leads into the chorus: It makes the human monkey brain feel good.

That was one of the first ones that Dom had written, and that was such an exciting moment to hear the lyrics and song really come to life. Writing [instrumentation] with vocals in mind is so much more freeing. The vocals are doing so much that you don't have to; you can work in a more subtle way and not try and demand everyone's attention all the time with the music. 

I think "Fish Brain" was another one that really came together. That was probably the one that we worked with Andrea very closely in finishing the song and it really helped us push it to another level. 

How would you say The Sunset Violent evolves Mount Kimbie’s sound from your 2017 album Love What Survives?

Campos: [Our goal was to] write in a way that was more direct. Obviously that can mean lots of different things, but whatever the shortest route for an idea to get executed was what I thought would be interesting to do. I guess that really means [being] more accessible. 

But obviously it wasn't a shot at commercial success. It just so happened that the idea of writing songs that were catchy— just really as simple as they could be, while still being interesting and having quality. That was the major difference from the work that we've done in the past… You can kind of see the evolution of the band through the records. To me, this one feels quite fundamentally different in the way that the songs are written.

In what way?

Campos: I think just the simplicity, or the feeling of simplicity. What I realized over the years was that the pop music that I really enjoyed, or the songwriting that I really enjoyed, sounded simple. And then when you dig into it and try to deconstruct it, you realize there's actually these very important nuances to it that make it work, but from the listener's perspective, it just feels right. 

So it was just trying to do that: have these songs that make you feel something in your gut, but you don't necessarily need to understand why. 

Your music has evolved so much since Crooks & Lovers. Looking back, are you surprised where you've ended up? Or do you feel it was inevitable?

Maker: Oddly, I was thinking about this today. I think it was actually inevitable because we were just really interested in and excited by a certain style and scene in music when we first moved to London when we were younger; 2009, 2010, that era. It was a fascination that really is in just a place and time. 

A lot of that reminds me of growing up, us figuring out London, moving from small towns to the big city, and everything about it being exciting. But I think the fact that we immediately were like, we need to play this live said a lot. Through the years that's been a huge thing, the live show, and trying to approach these songs live has always been something we've really enjoyed doing, and we've got so many amazing memories doing it.It sort of naturally has landed us in this scenario where the sound that we have at the moment feels like something that we want to keep doing more of, which we haven't really had before. We've made records and it's been a long process making them, then when you get to the end, it's sort of like, we should find something new. But, this time, we finished the record and immediately there's still this burning energy to keep going with this sound and writing style. It feels really good and exciting, and I'm glad that the road led us to where we're at now. 

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