Mambo Kahn on Jazz, Classical Training & Why Minimal Club Tracks Are Harder to Get Right | Faux Poly Interviews

Mambo Kahn learned clarinet and harpsichord at five. He fell hard for Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, and Pat Metheny. And for years, that deep classical and jazz training was both a gift and a burden—especially when trying to make underground club music. Now based in Berlin, the full-time scientific researcher has found his footing somewhere between the two worlds. His track "Fast, Feast, Repeat" leans into a stark minimalism that directly challenges his melodic instincts.

In this interview, Kahn discusses imagining drum patterns away from the studio, why minimal tracks are harder to nail than layered ones, and how Berlin's competitive-but-supportive scene pushed him to "drift away and look for your own sound.”

Q: Hey Mambo Kahn, can you give us a bit of background on where you’re from and how you first got into music?

A: Hey I’m Jim aka Mambo Kahn, I come from Normandy (north-western bit of France) and started learning music early: my parents put me at 5 in a school where roughly half of our time was dedicated to music lessons. I learnt clarinet and harpsichord following classical training methods there, but as soon as a dedicated class opened, I turned to jazz. Heavily inspired by the sounds of Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny and others, this is still probably to this day my favorite genre to play and listen to. As I am a full-time scientific researcher today, this whole period was a great foundation to remind me that I love spending as much time as possible with music, even today.

Q: How has being based in Berlin shaped your sound and approach?

A: Techno is one of my early electronic music discoveries: I had put it on the side for a while, but, listening to DJs coming here to play (Mama Snake, Skee Mask, Bruce), I surprised myself by coming back to it. With my partner, we regularly listen to mind-blowing sets which excite me to produce more actively, and try wilder stuff. Attending these reminds me that canons and standards are really only a starting point: you need to force yourself to drift away and look for your own sound for it to make sense.

Practically speaking, music is present everywhere: in conversations with our friends or performances in clubs, concert halls, etc. The ecosystem for producers and DJs is competitive (the fight for gigs!) but also very supportive: there are studio spaces, synth specialists, turntable repair shops and plenty of workshops/community gatherings for under-represented communities.

Q: What drew you into electronic music after coming from a classical and jazz background?

A: I started producing electronic music around 16 and developed my practice along with my general knowledge of electronic music, leaning toward bass music around 2017. Compared to classical and jazz, it felt like unexplored territory where initiative was really key, because at the time I did not know anyone with that expertise. Also, there wasn’t this abundance of tutorials showing you how to reproduce a method or a specific sound, and I had fewer cultural references, so I believe I had a more experimental approach compared to now (but let’s face it, the material sounded horrible too).

Q: Do you feel like your classical training helps when making club music?

A: Although I still regard the two almost as completely different practices, a few concepts do transfer from classical to club music: tension and release, call and response, arrangement, and of course harmony and voicing. For this reason, classical training probably helps unconsciously, but it can be a burden too. For instance, it often limits my exploration of melodic or harmonic structures, and can make me lose focus on some aspects which are absolutely key for club music, like simplicity, space and groove.

Q: You’ve talked about imagining drum patterns away from the studio - how important is that mental process for you?

A: These patterns are often just a starting point: it is rare that they make their way into the final tune. Funny enough, for “Fast, Feast, Repeat”, the drums stayed rather consistent from beginning to end, and if I recall correctly, I think it came from a mixture between baile funk rhythms and Burial-style drum loops. Sometimes these patterns stick around like an earworm and can be a bit overwhelming, probably because I am unconsciously afraid to forget them: I often find myself beatboxing to my phone to get rid of it.

Q: “Fast, Feast, Repeat” leans into minimalism compared to your usual style. Was that a conscious challenge?

A: 100%. It was not my intention from the start, but as I got the first functioning loop, it occurred to me that this is the typical situation where any addition could ruin the track. Instead, I tried to stick to what I got and make it work somehow..

Q: Do you think minimal tracks are harder to get right than more layered ones?

A: For me, definitely. Come to think of it, it might be related to the classical/jazz training too, which emphasizes melody and harmony, where club music is 90% drums, bass and having it groove. In a way, it is easier for me to throw tons of melodic and harmonic elements at a tune, but it’s rarely compatible with underground club music sounds. When I want to produce a club tune, I have to force myself to think on a different level and focus on what matters for club music. There, most of the ideas co-exist in a 16-bar loop, and successful arrangement rather comes from stripping things away than adding them.

Q: What’s exciting you most in electronic music right now?

A: The boundaries between hip-hop and underground electronic music got blurred 2 million times over the past decade. One very relevant example would be Bombaclart Bass in Hamburg pushing Jersey and UK garage in German rap. Also, it feels like many producers are not afraid to hybridize anymore and increasingly introduce explicit references to their ethnic and cultural backgrounds - think people like 3Phaz, Ayesha or Muskila. It’s interesting to witness that tendency to look for emotion through cultural references, which contrasts with the “forward-thinking” sci-fi approach in the late 20th century.

On a more technical note, the tools for experimenting with electronic music have never been that accessible and impressive: community-made M4L devices, small plugin companies, cheap hardware synths etc. That’s a true democratization of music production, and it should be embraced by everyone that wants to create something new, and counter the industry-led tendency toward uniformization and gentrification of underground music.

Also, Skrillex mixtapes?!

Q: What’s next for Mambo Kahn - anything you can tell us about what’s coming up?

There is another release lined up this year on Ommaya records with a ton of collaborators, pretty excited about that. I was forced to step back from producing for the last 2 months because of work, and it made me extremely motivated to produce more original and personal electronic music, experimenting with more tools rather than stay trapped in the box.

I wanted for a long time to make broken beat jazz music in my own way and to take a shot at more esoteric choir-heavy electronic music. Let’s see where that goes.