Lastlings, made up of Josh and Amy Dowdle, create moody, synth-filled music inspired by sci-fi soundtracks and other dimensions. The Japanese-Australian brother-sister duo, on production duties and vocals/lyrics respectively, began dropping tracks in 2015 when they were still teenagers. 

Since then, they've toured with fellow synth-loving Aussies RÜFÜS DU SOL, remixed for them and are signed to their Rose Avenue imprint, fostering a mentorship that has grown into a true friendship (meme sharing included.) That relationship has been major in growing their recognition and fanbases in Australia, the U.S. and beyond.

Lastlings released their emotive debut album, First Contact, in November 2020 on Rose Avenue and Astralwerks, which has spawned remixes from LP Giobbi, CRi, Tim Englehardt and others. Their trippy, otherworldly visuals and their name came from an essay Josh wrote in high school about the last humans on earth. 

GRAMMY.com caught up with Amy and Josh over Zoom to learn more about getting back on stage in Australia recently, the vision and process for creating First Contact, working together as siblings, their friendship with RÜFÜS DU SOL, and more.

You wrapped up a real life, in-person Australia tour in May. What did it feel like to get back on stage after everything that was last year?

Amy: It felt really good. We missed playing shows so much. I think our first show of the tour was the first one we've played in about a year and a half. It was really awesome to be back on stage and to see people coming to our shows again.

The first few shows of the tour were actually seated and then I think the second half of the tour was standing, which was really cool. We're so lucky here in Australia that we get to actually play shows.

I was watching a Boiler Room or something for a real festival in Australia and people just looked so happy. It's nice to see people being happy and dancing together safely.

Josh: Yeah, especially where we're from, on the Gold Coast, it didn't really feel like there was much of an effect there. We had a little bit of a lockdown, but we were really lucky that we could still leave the house and go to the beach and all that kind of stuff. People in Melbourne had it way tougher, they went into lockdown a few times, [where] they couldn't leave the house or the five-kilometer radius.

And I think once it started to open up in Melbourne, that's when all the bigger events started happening down here and everyone was just like gearing to go out and have fun. And I've actually moved down to Melbourne from the Gold Coast and Amy's almost here, she's going to move to Melbourne as well. We're really excited for this next chapter.

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I want to talk about your album that came out last year. What was the vision for First Contact? What was the timeline for its release?

Amy: It's about all the moments you experienced in life for the first time and how they shape us as people. When we first started writing it, I think we wrote this one song that never actually made it onto the album and it was called "First Contact" at the time. We were like, "Oh, actually that'd be cool as an album name."

Josh: But yes, since then that song went to the back of the line and I still haven't finished it yet. And it's since changed names, but hopefully, it might make its way onto the second album. We didn't start writing First Contact as a like, "Oh we're going to write this album now." We started writing singles, and I think the first song that we finished was "Deja Vu" and that was ages ago, has to be two or three years ago.

That was the first one that we finished together, and then all the other ones we demoed out and then we went to America and we finished it. We stayed at the Rose Avenue house where RÜFÜS DU SOL was finishing their album [Solace] and we've worked a lot with Cassian, who's worked a lot with RUFUS. We were just really lucky to pair up with those guys and they helped us a lot with getting songs to another level. We learned a lot and they were really, really helpful with the album.

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So did you finish it before the pandemic?

Josh: Yeah, we finished it right before the pandemic, and we actually went to Japan to film our album teaser content and all of our press and promo stuff. We wanted to go out with a bang with this album, and Japan is such a beautiful place. We went over there literally right before COVID, it was right before Christmas actually.

And then COVID hit, so we couldn't really tour the album or didn't know what to do, so we had all this content backed up. So we just drip fed it all throughout 2020. We were lucky we could make that trip before COVID hit.

I was reading another interview, did you record some of the album or work on it in Japan?

Amy: Oh no, a lot of the lyrics were written in Japan. After I finished high school, I went to Japan with my mom. I used to sit up in my grandparents' top bedroom and it looked out onto all the other buildings with snow on them. It was a really good place to write, so I wrote a few of the songs there. Then, when Josh was 18—Do you want to tell the story, Josh?

Josh: I was 21. I went [to Japan] for four or five months and during that time I downloaded my first music software and was learning while I was traveling. And I know it sounds like a made-up story, but I was sitting on the bullet train one day and I open the software for the first time and literally I was going past Mount Fuji. It was a really beautiful, picturesque moment. The town that I was going to stay in got snowed in, so instead I stayed in a little hostel, just myself and the caretaker.

I just had nothing to do other than learn how to use the software, or read or walk out and go eat this special noodle there. It was just a really cool little town and I had to spend two or three weeks there snowed in because I couldn't leave. I couldn't go back to Tokyo, so I had no choice but to learn some music production.

That's so cool. Did being in Japan and the atmosphere there give birth to some of the songs?

Josh: Yeah, it's just a very inspiring place. And all the architecture, just the purposefulness of Japan and how much care they put into everything is very inspiring too.

Do you feel like the creative energy when you were working or writing in Japan felt different than when you're writing in Australia, than when you're writing in L.A.?

Amy: We [were] inspired by [the] snow [in Japan] a lot because we just don't have that here in Australia. It's just dry. We have a lot of other beautiful things.

Also, Blade Runner inspired this album a lot, it's one of our favorite movies. There's this scene where he's walking in the snow and it reminded us of Japan a lot. And we just don't have that in Australia, we don't have snow here. We do in one city but it's like the only place where you can go to here that actually has snow.

Josh: There are heaps of places that snow in Australia.

Amy: Really? Not like in Japan.

Josh: Yeah, not in the main towns, but yeah like it snows in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney.

Amy: Yeah, but not like as much as Japan does, it snows everywhere in Japan.

Can you talk a little bit about the meaning and inspiration for the "Out Of Touch" music video?

Josh: [Chuckles.] So, we were meant to film it as like a three-part music video with "Out Of Touch," "No Time" and the interlude. We filmed it in South Australia because it was the only place we could travel to, there was like a travel bubble I guess you'd call it between South Australia and Queensland, two States in Australia. We found a Screen South Australia photo gallery, where you can see where lots of different film sets and locations [were shot].

We went there without really scoping them out and it kind of backfired on us a little bit because we got there—it was just the weather. I think because they had the most rain they've had in like 40 years. So a lot of the places that we wanted to film at, like the salt flats—there's really beautiful salt flats that are really reflective—they were just completely muddy and gross. And we went to two of those, they were both just completely ruined. Then we went to the sand dunes to film and it was like 60 kilometer winds and the whole trip we were just getting absolutely ruined by the weather.

But it was like one of the most fun trips ever because we normally shoot with our friend Dylan Duclos and our close friend Rico Zhang was over from China, where he's a director. So we all collaborated on the idea together and went over and shot it together. We didn't get as much as we wanted out of it, but it turned out great in the end.

Amy: We pretty much just got one video out of what was meant to be three videos.

Josh: Yeah, we had to come back and reshoot a lot of the stuff in Queensland to actually finish the "Out Of Touch" video. And all the set builds, like the big monolith and the stuff we stand on, my dad and I had to rebuild them when we came back to Queensland and we had to get a truck and lug them around. There was so much that went it, it was a very D.I.Y. shoot, so we were cutting off on the corners and building a lot of this stuff ourselves and pulling in a lot of favors, basically.

What was the initial inspiration for the visuals—when I'm watching it, I feel like there's imagery and stuff that probably means something, like the burning tree?

Josh: It ended up becoming more of an arty conceptual piece more than something that had a clear narrative. Because when we had it in the three-act form, it was the Lastlings—which are us—we go and collect our army from this kind of research facility, then we take them back because that world is going to explode or deteriorate. That was the first act and then the second one was a limbo of the Lastlings walking through a dream-esque land. And then the third act was the resolve, when Amy collects everyone and takes them back because the world is going to explode.

Amy: And there are all just these different Amys. It's like "Rick and Morty." [Laughs.]

Josh: It became a really ambitious thing with time constraints and the weather and everything just kind of fell to bits at the end, but we managed to get enough footage for "Out
Of Touch" and make it a really nice, interesting piece.

You know when you watch something and you're like, "Is there something more? What does this mean?" I'm glad I wasn't really missing things, but it's super cool and it feels cinematic.

Josh: Yeah. There wasn't too much symbolism and stuff, like you said with the fire, and all the portals and stuff. But I think the moments in themselves are really cool because we got to explore some VFX stuff and really just flex on a lot of our own movie inspos that we love; there was a lot of Blade Runner references.

Even random movies like Prometheus, with the color grading and all that kind of stuff as well. It was almost like a homage to all of our favorite sci-fi films. Even the big planet in it kind of looks like the Death Star from Star Wars. And the monolith, it was like the ones in Space Odyssey.

What's it like making music together as siblings?

Amy: Sometimes we do fight but then we can be really honest with each other [about] what we like and don't like, too. And every time we're on tour and stuff, we're always so comfortable because we always know that we have a good friend there with us. Some people tour by themselves—I've asked people this as well, and they've said that sometimes they get a bit lonely or they wish they had someone close with them. So it's nice to have a brother there with you when you're on tour and stuff.

Josh: Yeah, for the music-making part, we're both very different. Amy does the lyrics and the singing and I do most of the production. So, we work kind of separately most of the time, like I'll do an instrumental or a bit of piano or just an idea, and then Amy generally writes some lyrics over that. And at the moment, it's kind of hard because we're not living in the same city, so we kind of have to send stuff back and forth and record it in our own time.

What was your workflow on the album?

Josh: I think Amy wrote most of her lyrics when she was in Japan and then I did a lot of the instrumental stuff. I made a lot of instrumental demos with ideas on them and then I kind of gave them to Amy and then she could recycle lyrics from her Japan trip or write new ones. It's a very collaborative process when most of the time it doesn't really start with us [together], but usually, it starts with me with an instrumental, then Amy writes on it.

What kind of music did you guys grow up listening to? Was it like a musical house and everything?

Amy: Yeah. I grew up listening to a lot of classical music and mom used to listen to a lot of J-Pop and so I listened to that too. And a lot of indie rock music when I was in my teens and then I started listening to electronic music when I was 18 or 17. I listened to a bunch of different stuff.

Josh: Yeah, we both started playing classical music when we were younger and then I quit. And it wasn't for a few years until I got into rock music, like Led Zeppelin and the Chili Peppers and all that kind of stuff. I think I did like one classical guitar lesson, and I hated that and quit. I taught myself electric guitar, then played in a band with a few friends. I think all my music interests were kind of around the music I was playing at the time. So like I said, Led Zeppelin, Red Hot Chili Peppers, is kind of the music we were playing in our band and Arctic Monkeys. Then I kind of moved on to more synthy stuff, more electronic stuff.

I think DJ Koze was my first introduction to electronic music. I think the DJ Koze remix of "Bad Kingdom" by Moderat was one of the first songs that I heard out in the club randomly one time that I'd actually really liked. Because the rest of them—it was just a kick drum really. That song really stuck out [to] me. I really loved electronic music from then.

I love that track. I think it was summer 2014? I just remember having it on repeat, and every time a DJ would play it, I was just like, "You're my favorite DJ."

Josh: Yeah, it was so good. And then like everyone started to rinse it; it just got so overplayed, but it's still such a good song. There were just a few DJs on the Gold Coast that would kind of ruin it; they'd play it too fast or just play it at the wrong time.

It was one that my friends and I would always play when we were DJing together. That's right, I started DJing before I started making music. My friends and I got one of those little [DJ] controllers when we were like 18, teaching each other how to DJ, it was so cute.

Do you remember your first electronic song or producer that you liked, Amy?

Amy: I actually think it was RÜFÜS. I would have been 15 when they put out "Take Me." I didn't even know that song was them when we were touring with them. I went back and found it and I was like, "I really liked that song when I was really young. My friends and I used to always play it," which is funny. I think that song and then also probably Flume when I was really young, he was probably one of the first electronic artists I started listening to.

And then it just started to evolve and then I went to a festival in Melbourne with Josh and a bunch of friends and I watched Fatima Yamaha and that was like the reason why I wanted to start listening to more electronic music.

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And what does your relationship with RÜFÜS feel like for you guys?

Josh: It's really good. They're like really chill and really, really nice guys. So, it was really easy to get along with them when we were touring together. And even when they were giving us feedback for some of our songs as well, they're really great guys to work with. So we've become friends as well, it's really cool, we send each other memes and stuff. It's great.

That's awesome. Yeah, they're so nice. They seem like brothers—once you tour in a van around America together, you become brothers.

Josh: Totally, totally. Yeah we were lucky to go and stay on their tour bus as well when we were doing some of the American shows, which [was a] really cool experience. It's such a weird concept to do a tour bus because in Australia we kind of fly everywhere because the cities aren't close enough together.

Amy: So fun! [The buses] are so small, like little capsules. It's like staying in hotels in Japan, but on a bus.

You recently put out the Bob Moses remix. How do you usually approach a Lastlings remix?

Josh: I usually start with the vocals and with some chords and tend to stay in the same key as the remix. With that song, I wanted to preserve the vocals as much and not drop the pitch down and stuff because he has a really, really nice voice. There's a Four Tet remix, of Eric Prydz's "Opus"—I don't know why that was the inspo for it, I think because it has a really massive build. But yeah I just wanted to make a nice long, slow-burning remix that had a bit of a nice build-up in the second part.

But yeah, I don't know. I just kind of use my Prophet-6 [analog synth] to get a bunch of nice atmospheric sounds and then just start building around that. And then, I normally do all the melodies and all the chords and stuff first before I do the drums. I know a lot of other producers start with drums, but I do it the other way around.

That's cool. I really liked that remix, it's nice.

Josh: Yeah, that was fun to make. I actually did another version of it first—I made four or five different remixes, but that was the one that I ended on.

Are you a perfectionist?

Josh: Oh, very.

Where did the name Lastlings come from?

Josh: Lastlings was a short story I wrote in high school about the last beings on earth. It was a dystopian story. All the trees and nature had grown over the cities and stuff. Have you seen "Love, Death & Robots" on Netflix? It's really good. In the new season, there was a city and I was like, "Oh my God, that's exactly the city that I had in mind when I was writing the story."

You guys are sci-fi nerds, I take it?

Josh: I like sci-fi. I always get asked that, but I guess I've seen a lot of them. I do love it. I just love really fantastical worlds and stuff that probably will never exist. The more we get into the future, I'm like, "Wow, maybe some of this stuff is actually real."

Amy: Yeah, every story I read in high school was fantasy or sci-fi.

Okay, broad question but I always like to end on a positive note. What's your biggest hope for the future?

Amy: I have so many wishes, I just want the world to be less f***ed up.

Josh: Pretty much. I really want Coronavirus to f*** off.

Amy: That's a lot of F words. I would like future generations are more open-minded—I think there's time [for all of us] to be more open-minded as well.

Josh: Yeah, I wish we had a more unified world and everyone was on the same wavelength.

Amy: Hopefully it's like that in the future.

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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.

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"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. 

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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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Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

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He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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