Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan)
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| Ben Weiman, guest guitar on 'Come Into My Head' at Webster Hall NYC (Oct. 20, 2012). |
... I love people that are just the best at what they do. Typically I love all kinds of music and when I came across her, she had done the collaboration with Gotye ["Somebody That I Used to Know"], which ended up being obviously a huge smash success. But before the U.S. heard of either them, I was traveling in Australia touring and someone shared their work with me and I started going down the rabbit hole and watching YouTube videos. I got really, really into her stuff. I was like, "Wow, what she's doing is really important for pop music." There hasn't been someone like this since Björk who has really been pushing the boundaries and who was just such a musical genius and then putting it into a pop scenario.
This wasn't somebody who had people writing songs for her. This was someone who really understood and knew exactly what she was and what she wanted. So I was really interested in her stuff and playing it for people a lot. Then I found out she was a Dillinger fan. Somehow we got connected and it turns out she'd been listening to Dillinger forever and had to four of our shows. Her band she plays with used to be in a mathcore band that was heavily influenced and they would do Dillinger covers in New Zealand. They were like the only band in New Zealand doing anything like that and that's her backing band now.
It just kind of fell together and we started hanging out and making music together. I perform with her onstage and she's now one of my friends basically.
(Ben Weinman: 'Guitarists Are Not Creative Anymore - They're Playing Around With Presets' − June 23, 2014)
Bilal
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| Bilal collaborated with Kimbra on the song 'Everlovin Ya' for her album 'The Golden Echo'. |
I had worked on her last record that came out [The Golden Echo] and that was just so fun! I didn’t know she was that f*ckin’ badass! I came to the studio and she kicked the engineer out and engineered the session! She’s killin on the axe, she’s a killin’ beat producer. It was just like a female Prince! I was not expecting that. Kimbra was like my sister after that.
(Bilal Transcends Neo-Soul with ‘In Another Life’ [INTERVIEW] − June 2015)
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| Bilal performing his duet 'Holding It Back' with Kimbra at Highline Ballroom (New York) in July 2015. (UPDATE) |
Mini Mansions
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| Mini Mansions at the Amoeba Music store in Los Angeles, on March 25, 2015. Kimbra showed up to help with vocals on 'Sherlock Holmes'. |
Michael Shuman:
There’s this guy Keefus [Green] and Keefus is a brilliant piano player and producer and we’d done some tracks with him, on the first songs we did that I was telling you about that was supposed to be the EP, and he started doing some Kimbra stuff . He called me one day and was like, “Oh, I’m working with this girl Kimbra”. I hadn’t heard of her before, and he’s like, “She’s a big fan of yours, you should come over and meet her”, so I went over there and we hung out and I heard her stuff which was like so crazy and watching her work was… she’s really incredible. So we became friends and when she was going to do her new record she asked us to come and write with her so we went into the studio and all four of us had a room together and came up with a bunch of songs and ‘Carolina’ is the one that ended up making the record. And yeah, that’s it and hopefully we get to do more soon, we’re still talking about finishing the other stuff one day.
(Mini Mansions on recording with Alex Turner and touring with Tame Impala − May, 2015)
Matt Bellamy (Muse)
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| Although Kimbra's touring guitarist Timon Martin did most of the guitar work on the track '90s Music', the "obnoxious detuned guitar part" in the pre-chorus (in Kimbra's words) is courtesy of The Muse frontman. |
Just seeing her at work is amazing.
I thought I was good at multitasking and throwing ideas together, but she's working multitracks - 160 different tracks on a song and every one is like a strange sound effect voice that, if you hear it on its own doesn't make sense, but when you put together ... it's a crazy thing.
She really is a genius. What she's doing is cutting-edge. I couldn't believe it.
(Muse returns to its roots − June 6, 2015)
Mew
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| 'The Night Believer'. Kimbra features on Mew's new album '+ -'. |
That actually started because she was working on her album with Rich Costey, who we’ve worked with a lot. She used to listen to a lot of Mew when she was younger, and so she asked through him if we’d be interested in having her sing on one of our songs.
I wasn’t all too familiar with her. I obviously knew the Gotye song, which I loved; but I didn’t know her solo songs that well at that point. I was so impressed when Rich sent me over her songs – they’re so full of imagination, so inventive. It’s basically progressive pop, which is my favourite style of music if that even exists.
I knew she’d be perfect for the album and she actually ended up singing quite a bit on the album ["+ -"]. I think she ended up on about four songs away from the one she sings lead on [The Night Believer]. She sent me all these vocal tracks, and she builds and layers her vocals so brilliantly.
(Mew Talk New Album ‘+ -‘ & Working With Kimbra − April 21, 2015)
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| Kimbra makes special appearance at a Mew concert at Webster Hall (New York) in October 2015. More here. (UPDATE) |
Big Data
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| Big Data performing 'The Glow' with Kimbra at The Troubadour, Los Angeles (April 30, 2015). |
Oh my god, it was absolutely incredible. She’s probably the most talented person I’ve ever met before. Her brain works at such a faster pace than anyone else I know. Ideas just firing off just constantly. There were so many different cool things about working with her…we were together for two days, basically, and the way I work with everybody is I sort of come into the studio with the track written and then we work together on the melodies and the lyrics. She came in and she had already come up with tons of ideas on her own time. So that was just cool to begin with, and then after we had written all the parts on the first day, we came in on the second day and she just kind of ran the show! She was equally comfortable behind the board on ProTools and making her own edits.
The coolest thing was, she just sang the whole thing in one take! Usually when I’m writing a song with somebody we’ll go, “Let’s do the first verse! OK, that was cool, let’s try it again. OK, now let’s do the chorus, okay, cool! Let’s try that again.” With her it was like, “How do you want to do it, Kimbra?” And she was like, “Oh, I’m just going to sing the entire song.” And then she just did a flawless performance on that first time I ever really heard her sing the song ['The Glow']. That alone was a pretty magical experience. She’s just a really inspiring person – just all around.
(Interview: Big Data − March 31, 2015)
(Special thanks to Alanah for pointing out the article on Muse!)
