Dominic Maker - “The things that resonate are always the ones that come from within”

Cover Photo Shot by Kimrey Nicholson

In this exclusive Studio Talks interview, we delve into the career of Dominic Maker, the acclaimed producer whose credits include working with James Blake, Travis Scott, Jay-Z, and many more. Dominic is also a member of the electronic music band Mount Kimbie. From his early experiments with Cubase to his influential work in London and Los Angeles, Maker discusses his evolution from UK electronic music to hip-hop. His reflections on projects like Bad Cameo, the process behind the scenes of working with James Blake and Lil Yachty, and his advice to new producers provide valuable insights into his creative journey and the modern music industry.

Can you share your journey into music and music production from the early beginnings?

I started making music in my early 20s. My brother was learning guitar at the time, so the house was always full of music. He practiced a lot and became really good at it. My parents weren’t musical at all; it was just my brother who really got into the guitar. I always loved listening to music, but I never thought I’d actually make it myself. Then, he showed me a few simple things I could do on Cubase, and that’s when I started producing, probably around the mid-2000s.

When I say producing, I was really just messing around, kind of making songs. Then I moved to London for university, and that changed everything. There was so much amazing music being made in London, and I saw so many live shows and DJs. It was then that I started to understand how important music was to me.

From there, I began to figure out how to make music and express what I wanted in musical form. In my first week in London, I met Kai Campos, who is the other half of our group, Mount Kimbie. Together, we’ve had a long career making alternative electronic music. I’ve also started producing for other people.

I moved to California about eight years ago and spent a lot of time working in Los Angeles, doing sessions with different artists. It’s been a long process, but I feel like I’m now at a point where I’m more confident in getting my ideas down in musical form.

You mentioned you moved to LA and started working more in hip-hop and rap, what motivated the shift from the UK electronic scene to this genre?

I don’t think I fully understood what I was doing at the time. When I first moved to LA, I didn’t know much about the world of producing, which turned out to be really exciting. I hadn’t really thought it through beforehand, and suddenly, it became addictive to learn how people made records. The work I was doing with Mount Kimbie in the UK was very insular—it was just me and Kai, and I was pretty naive and unequipped to grasp what I was doing. I'm not a very technical person, so it took me a while to get comfortable with the technical side of producing music.

When I got to LA, I reconnected with James Blake, who had also just moved there. Even before I moved, whenever James was touring, I’d meet him at a show, bring my laptop, and we’d share what we’d been working on. He always told me there was something in the Mount Kimbie sound that felt untapped. So, after I moved, I was immediately thrown into this new world. James was working on a record with Vince Staples, and suddenly, I found myself in a huge studio in Hollywood, listening to beats he’d made on massive speakers. I became completely obsessed with that sound—the sheer size of it. Hearing music like that for the first time on massive studio monitors was just amazing. James was really the reason I got into that kind of production—rap production—out in LA. That was the catalyst.