After a year of touring and a handful of releases, Mount Kimbie’s Dom Maker and Kai Campos have finally had some time to relax and work on some highly anticipated productions. “We’re in Sussex,” reports Kai. “We rented a cottage down here where we’ve been writing new music, something we’ve wanted to do really badly.”

One half of the duo is on the phone to tell inthemix about the progress of their live shows, the pair’s relationship with the Hotflush label, as well as what’s on the agenda for 2011. Their eclectic album Crooks & Lovers has been highly rated by listeners and critics across the world. 2010 has been a huge year for the South London duo, touring alongside Mercury Prize winners The XX in North America and later Caribou around Europe.

After meeting at university in London, spending time discussing and blending musical tastes, as well as attending parties at the influential dubstep night DMZ in London, Mount Kimbie began producing the beats which are now heard by audiences all over the world.

The past year, Mount Kimbie have been working hard on perfecting their live performances. “We made these songs in our bedrooms and stuff and it’s a very different thing taking them into that live arena,” concedes Kai.

Learning how to adapt more ambient productions into something dancefloor-friendly has proved to be a rewarding challenge for Kai and Dom. “We had a show last Saturday for the Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards at Koko in London and it felt like an end of year thing because it was the last show before we came home. It was by far the best show we have ever played. It was everything we had been trying to do. It came together at the right time and we hadn’t practised much, which was good.

“That was really a massive confidence boost because it was a massive crowd and we were playing after James Blake and Flying Lotus, so it was a pretty hard thing to follow. I thought it just all sort of made sense and it was exactly what we have been trying to do, so I’m so happy that after a year of doing this it’s finally starting to work out exactly how we want it to. I’m very excited to be going out and doing more.”

Mount Kimbie are playing in a range of different spaces for their upcoming Australian dates in early March. The duo’s approach to live electronic music has been received differently by many crowds across the world. Their shows have been known to include live guitars, vocals as well as pre-recorded samples.

“Some of the shows where we play with ‘band bands’, people are quite confused that you have samplers and stuff,” says Kai. “Then you play shows like Berghain and people are upset that you get a guitar out. There was a girl [at Berghain], it was a really good show but this girl was telling us to fuck off for like half an hour.”

At this Sub:Stance night at Berlin’s techno institution Berghain, Mount Kimbie played alongside more conventional dubstep artists such as Mala, Scuba, Bristol’s Appleblim and MJ Cole. These acts have undoubtedly had a huge influence on Mount Kimbie’s sound, yet their music is dissimilar in so many ways.