Electronica duo Mount Kimbie will return to Glasgow on Monday – having learned that taking a step backwards is sometimes a good thing.

The pair – Kai Campos and Dominic Maker – have changed their style on new album Love Will Survive, offering a looser, poppier approach than before, with guest singers like longtime pal James Blake appearing.

Kai believes the transformation was due to them not being afraid to fall flat on their face.

“Confidence is a funny thing,” he says, ahead of their gig at the Art School next week.

“I think that as you learn more you become more humble, and you realise that whatever you do there’s going to be flaws in it. You don’t need to look for a grand answer.

“In terms of changing your style, it’s about being happy with the fact it might suck for a while, and knowing when you’re learning something new you won’t be great at it straight away. It takes time to find your own way.”

The duo’s first two albums, Crooks & Lovers and 2013’s Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, were linked more with the post-dubstep sound that emerged around 10 years ago, but Kai was determined that that this record would shake things up.

“The first record was so precise in how we made it that there was nowhere else to go after that,” he says.

“Once I had done that it became very uninteresting to do it again. So this was a wholesale change and there were long periods where it didn’t really work, but eventually your voice comes through in it.

“I think you can always hear when an artist makes a record similar to one you’ve liked before – there’s something lacking, a curiosity, and we wanted to avoid that.”

An example of that comes with the various guest vocalists they’ve assembled. While Kai and Dom have worked with other acts before, Love Will Survive features several different vocalists stepping in, from Mercury Music Prize winning singer James Blake to experimental popster Micachu and the rapper King Krule.

“I think with electronic music, which is what we were seen as being with the first couple of records, you would see an artist having interesting ideas and then get other people to sing on it, and then it would be less interesting,” says Kai.

“I was just wary of that and it was something we had to get over when making the record.”

Something the duo did want to repeat, however, was a return to Glasgow.

“We always love playing in Glasgow,” adds Kai.

“It’s a great place to play, the audiences are always up for it. In the past the memories can be pretty hazy – in the early days we didn’t have any tour managers or strict schedules to keep to so it was always a late one. I remember a few times wandering down Buchanan Street about four in the morning after a show…”

Travelling is something the twosome have had to get used to recently. Dom now lives in Los Angeles while Kai remains in London, and although it’s common for bands to exchange ideas over the internet, Kai felt something was being lost without working face to face.

“Dom pays rent in the States but the poor guy has been over here quite a lot,” he laughs.

“We’re pretty useless at technology, so trying to find a way of sharing large files to work with was never going to happen. I don’t think that’s conducive to interesting work. I think you lose a bit of communication when you are sending files back and forth and it becomes easy to have these misunderstandings.

“It was easier and more fun for me to go to LA or him to come to London, and we just spent that time in a more focused way.”

The pals have been in the band for nearly 10 years and while it can be tough working creatively with only one other person, Kai feels their partnership is in a healthy space.

“Dom and I have been though relationships where you look back and think ‘God, I was terrible at communicating – hopefully I’m a better person now’ and it’s kinda the same with me and Dom’s own relationship,” explains Kai.

“We’ve had many different phases in that time. Yeah, we’ve had some massive blow-ups over the years but I think getting through it and working out issues means you end up in a better place.”

Mount Kimbie, Art School, Monday, £15, 7pm

JONATHAN GEDDES